there’s a drop in every bomb
a pause in every song
the feeling that hits you between the eyes
even if it starts between your thighs
it gives us what we need to trace
the lines that lead to that secret space
where hearts and blood and bone collide
and turn to light before our eyes
a direction so easy that it’s hard to find
a path that’s straight but appears to wind
a distance that is actually near
a hope that cancels out the fear

but as our hearts begin to race
the past begins to give us chase
it knows by now where we try and hide
and meets us there, arms open wide
and before we know it we’re back again
in the world where we just pretend

but there’s a trick i’ve learned, from years of not trying
a word that was spoke, before the days of the dying
i can’t remember what it is
and couldn’t speak it if i did
it’s a word you say that stays inside
that makes you remember what it is to be alive
we each have one that we’ve all been given
and part of what we’re here for is to find where it’s hidden
but while you’re on that brutal search
and the terrors at night they begin to lurch
you must reverse the way you look
’cause the knowledge is always inside the book
when things on the outside aren’t what they appear
it’s probably because your insides aren’t clear
sometimes you have to close your eyes to see
why everyone’s sayin’ 1 + 1 = 3
found art

it’s the faith
that comes from your fingertips
that makes me a believer
the way that look
just rolled off your lashes
and landed in the one place
i thought i could hide

you called me out
and then took me in
deeper than i thought was possible
your irises
with their unlimited exposure
capturing the darkness
that the light has made

i want everything
and expect nothing
i want nothing
and expect everything

will you allow me to explore
every inch
as if it were a mile
will you lay down tracks
with beats and maps
that lead me to where you want to be
because there are no roads
talk me down
from the great heights
where expectation has placed us
help me unravel this mortal coil
we are wound up in

say my name
as if it were a single note
that could shatter the illusion
that we are separate beings
use your voice to break the glass
that is there in case of emergency
just one note
held up high
and stretching forever
across this full moon night
across the plain states and fertile crescents

bent by perfection
i form the shape of a bow
there is no question that i am aiming towards your center
and the only reason i am afraid to let go
is the fear that i will pass right through you

http://kalliopeamorphous.deviantart.com/

there’s a song that’s always playing
that you can hear any time you want
the radio inside
it’s down below
buried deep in the architecture
underneath where our bodies are built
it carries a tune
through the cords
through our circuitry
veins that plug into amplified hearts
and send out waves of sonic bliss

for me
it’s about the way our bodies just fit
as if there was never a choice
but to bring them together
as if those notes were already written
a silence that sounds like a symphony
the kind of discovery that deepens the mystery

it is possible to live forever
in fact
there isn’t any choice
our hands have never let go
of what they held
and our breath
as always
swirls around us
like a halo
our aural history
that remains unwritten
because there are no words to describe us
only music

http://pheebsyeahbaby.deviantart.com/

can you see the stars as if you could hold them
as if they were the sparks of frost
falling from your breath
and you could catch them with your hand
can you see them as i see you
as a metaphor
as something that might come out tonight
depending on the weather
as something that pretends to be so close
while being so far away
or maybe not even there at all
i can see the stars out tonight
i can see myself in the sliding glass door
there is a shape in the reflection
behind me and to the left
it is more an absence than a presence
but it is still a ghost

http://caztaylor.deviantart.com

it’s like the pressure wants to react
when it gets too much
to just be slack

i remember when things worked without words
and you couldn’t tell where our limbs let go
when the sunset made you bleed
the way the colors collided
over our bed
and onto your skin

there was something there
even if you can pretend there wasn’t
i have seen time travel
to places it never came back from
you said you might be around later
but what does that even mean

http://morbidthegrim.deviantart.com/

who knows where truth goes
once it passes human lips
the knowledge we hold in our hearts
the words that our thoughts form
so full of heat and blood and purpose
even as they make their way out
they have such a hopeful shape
but their sparks turn into steam
as they collide with the cold air
and mix with earth’s atmosphere

there’s so much that can be said
about what remains unspoken
but i’ll have to save it for silence
for the times we get to hold each other
and hide deep inside each others bones
our words become flesh and our body becomes night
as we weave ourselves into a pattern
that communicates everything that the world needs to know
an electric currency that courses through our veins
and lights the path towards the center of our heart

the one we share
on nights like these
when it’s too cold
to think about distances
or how close you can really get
while still being apart

http://loverbutt.deviantart.com/

you have risen
from out of bed
into the atmosphere
and you are once again free
and i alone
in knowing
what will happen next
in knowing
what that dream was
and what that blood meant
i have gone around in my head
with all of it
the car,
the garden,
the way you kissed my lips
one
at
a
time
i have turned it so much that it’s twisted
bent beyond recognition
and now i have no context
there’s no starting line anymore
i can’t tell how far it is to the end
and there’s this feeling i can’t shake
that there isn’t one

from ashes and snow, by gregory colbert: http://www.ashesandsnow.org

i don’t remember the name of the movie i just watched an hour ago and that’s probably best. it was the kind of tripe that’s very existence, let alone my viewing of it, would have 10 years ago left me with a disdain for freedom of speech and a renewed vigor for cultural censorship. that was before i had children. once that happened, no matter how manipulative or banal, any movie with someone trying to save and/or make their child happy, will ultimately drive me to tears. tears i hide. tears i pretend not to have. tears that i was drying with short bursts of breath banked off of my lower lip, as to not let my children see i was crying. and it’s not because i don’t want my children to see me cry, it’s because i don’t want them to think this intellectually anemic movie is worth crying over.

but it’s wasn’t the movie. the movie really is shit, it’s not even subjective. no. it was izzy and jake. the movie, the daughter, the father, the impractical sacrifices that tie up like a bejeweled bow by the end, they are surrogates for my worst fears and my deepest love. no matter how bad it got i was rapt, and held onto my daughter and son, cheering as the pablum parade marched on to its candy-colored crescendo. i was waving like a tourist. and i’m not ashamed. because afterward, even though i can’t remember the name of the movie, which i count as a blessing, i got to lay with my children and hold them for real. i got to tell them that it was more than highly unlikely that either their mother or i would die in a fiery crash. i got to see them unclench themselves once that sunk in. i got to feel them trust me enough to really let that sink in. i got to revel in their joy, that they could hold me; a living breathing soul, who they could feel loving them stronger than anything they knew, or would ever know. not in hd, not in ‘real’ 3d, but in carbon and light. an analog love.

My only real friend in Elysium was Peter Porlucas. He was Italian, but he wasn’t, cause he was adopted. His mom was a one-woman assembly line of food, feeding us cheese-laden, breaded dishes bathed in olive oil with names that I couldn’t begin to pronounce, let alone spell. Tastes so different from anything I had ever put in my mouth, I was never sure they were supposed to be eaten. She had hair in places that you normally saw bare, and there was something around her eyes, a Mediterranean depth that belied any Midwest roots. Her ankles were as big as my father’s, but she had an olive beauty that you could make out beneath the surface. His Dad was stout and had a Boston accent, despite being from Missouri. He always sat by the TV with a pipe and nodded at us as we’d go in and out of the house, tapping his pipe loudly on the end table if we forgot to shut the door behind us. Peter had reddish hair and freckles, with a rabbit’s overbite and the build of someone who tried hard to be athletic, despite all that nature had held back. You could see in Peter’s body the things he tried hard to be, they reached out like arms grasping for something perpetually out of reach. It earned him the nickname “little Italy”.

Pete’s brother was eight years older than us and had changed is name to Aloise in his senior year of high school, after his favorite hockey player. He’d beat up on Peter every passing chance he got. There were always shouts from either parent, from somewhere in a different part of the house, “Aloise, leave your brother alone!”, but no one ever did anything about it. So it always kept happening, getting worse in slow gradation. We’d be walking around town or even in the country, and all of a sudden Aloise would screech out from nowhere in his SWAT van and kidnap us. It was terrifying, but it was also the most fun I’ve ever had.

One afternoon, behind a dead barn, Pete taught me how to masturbate. I pretended I didn’t know how. He made me promise we’d always stick together and never let the outside world get to us. We were both outcasts, me by choice, sort of, and him by defiance of his will. He tried so hard to fit in, that it made the chances of such a thing happening hopeless. I’m not sure if he settled for me or if there was some kind of magnetics that brought us together. Either way, he would shed tears in front of me, about his brother, about his height, about everything that he kept inside. He’d always end these confessionals by pretending it was all in jest. But there was a spark of knowing in his eyes, a silent pact he was making with me. When we were at school, though, and the kid’s would get bored and start picking on him, he’d turn on me. Every time.

“Hey, I saw Indiana taking a bath with his mom.”

Things that had no basis in fact, but would do the trick in re-routing the attention and ridicule from himself for a few minutes. For my part, I would take it in stride, either letting it wash over me, or in braver moments, murmuring back to the biggest kid who would ask me, in a mocking bellow so that everyone could here, “Is it true, you take baths with your mom?”

“No.” I remember answering one day, after my father had disappeared, “It was your mom.” That incident sent me to the nurses and then to Dr. Handler’s for stitches.

Peter would never disclose to the others any real confession I made to him. The ones he’d let loose were from out of nowhere. I wonder if they were, in part, things that were true about his own life, things he was embarrassed about. I figured he’d never let slip anything we had talked about, thinking it would maintain the bond of trust we had. Whenever we were alone, we’d never discuss it, why he’d turn on me and make up those lies. Partly because I think both of us knew why, but the words were not ready for our pre-adolescent lips.

One day we were playing war in the woods behind his house with his father’s old army gear, which we had snuck out from the garage. It had just rained the day before and everything was mushy, except the air, which was crisp. I had captured him and was standing over him, his arms pinned under my feet. He kept saying I could wear the gear next, but it would always be “five more minutes”. I held in my hands the hard metal helmet he had been wearing and we looked at each other. It was a dull, brown green and I held it over him, examining it like a spoil of war, as he looked up at me from the ground. I caught his eye and, both by accident and on purpose, I let go of it. The hard stained helmet came down on his face, catching his buck-rabbit teeth and making a clink that echoed like a bee-bee gun. I watched the sound escape through the branches of the trees above, like a bird fleeing. He let out a loud “Ahhhhhh” That rose in volume, as he got up and felt his lips, which were bleeding. I was frozen with shock, not quite believing what I had just done.

“I didn’t do that” is the first thing I said.

When he took his hands away from his mouth, I could see that both of his front teeth had been chipped.

“My mom’s gonna fucking kill you.” He lisped.

I watched a speck of blood fly out, as he spoke, and land on my soiled, white t-shirt. In between the dots of mud, it almost blended in. And I thought to myself, maybe no one will notice.

By the time they found the cancer in his stomach, it was the size of a baseball. He spent four weeks in the hospital and then died, the day after our eighth grade graduation party where I kissed Sally Potter, behind Ed Nance’s Gazebo. I never visited him in the hospital, not once. Not because I was scared or angry. Not because I didn’t love him. Things were just moving, in their own direction. And I didn’t know I had a choice, or maybe I didn’t want to know.

I saw his mom. She came to our graduation and wailed the whole time like the women in those spaghetti westerns or The Godfather would, dressed in black and huddled in the midst of consoling arms. Her olive was just a dull green now. I avoided her the whole time, like I had when she had come to our house, offering to take me to the hospital so I could see Peter. I was always gone, or hiding, when she came. My mom never pressured me, maybe because my father. Maybe for some other reason I don’t understand. I was coming out of the bathroom after the service, everyone had left and I was staying back to help clean up in exchange for a missing P.E. credit I had needed for graduation. She was there waiting. No one else was in the gym, where our ceremony had been. The silence ricocheted off the walls like the sound of basketballs dribbling.

I was cemented to the ground with the bathroom door swinging behind me. I wondered where all the women were that had been consoling her, propping her up. It hadn’t seemed that she could stand on her own before, she had looked like a black cloud being carried along. Now she stood squat, suspended by those ankles, girders propping up a leaning tower. And I wondered if it was evolutionary biology that gave her those ankles, knowing she would one day have to support herself under a weight that normal anatomy would never have allowed. She broke what seemed to be an infinite silence.

“He loved you. Gary. He loved you.”

She needed something from me, but I didn’t know what. I wish I could have cried, broken down right there and held her, or at least have her hold me. But I was silent. I couldn’t even move. After what felt like minutes, she left me standing there. And I continued to stand there for another half-hour, unmoving, unblinking, until my mother came in looking for me.

“Gary, I’ve been waiting outside for twenty minutes.”

“I’ll walk, Mom. Just go.”

As I watched her leave, I thought of how he’d turned on me, those moments on the playground. I wondered if somehow, some part of him, knew we’d need this balance. But it didn’t really seem like balance. It just seemed like air. A distance that was there, but that I couldn’t see.

http://intao.deviantart.com/

there are no words for what i am feeling
but there are names for the gods that you can chant
something to call out
or to keep inside
i am at the video store
i am inside your skin
i am at the coffee shop
there are all these things to distract me
i am in the andes
and on spanish steps
i am climbing towards the place where they said you would be
and falling down drunk at the thought of getting what i want
a terrifying thought
ferocious limbs
asymmetrical desires that form a perfect circle
skin so soft it would eat me alive
everything in your heart is so unsettled and yet well placed
but perfection is always messy
i want a body i can trust and a soul that fits inside of it
i am tired of keeping my wishes in these bottles
there’s no point in collecting things that are supposed to be enjoyed
so we will open up our hearts and drink what’s inside
and if we are always drunk, we will never be hungover

photo by richard seah: http://www.jpgmag.com/people/uptight

the first time i read ‘a perfect day for bananafish’, it was from a battered copy of nine stories gifted to me by a close friend and dysfunctionally brilliant writer who had been given the book for his birthday, as evidenced by someone else’s inscription to him on the title page. it took me thirty minutes to finish, a relatively long time given the size of the story. this is mainly because i kept re-reading lines and sitting with them for a moment; both out of fear that i’d miss something and for the slight promise that they would equip me enough to continue on with the story, comprehending it for what i knew it was, for what i knew it could be for me. if only i were able to ‘really’ understand it. it was like beginning a movie that, five minutes in, you know is going to be one of your favorites. for me, pulp fiction and lolita both had that quality. and as with them, i willed or prayed for time to slow down, so i could milk this moment for all it was worth. and it turns out it was worth everything. you don’t get a second-chance at a first time, after all.

by the time i came to the end, i realized that it was not necessary to sit and analyze everything to get its deeper meaning. salinger had done this for me, for us. he had already analyzed, lived and pained through the deeper meanings and context. he surfaced them in crisp, simple sentences; western koans, which if you were too smart about it, might belie their rich, metaphysical context. this is salinger’s gift and ultimately what made him the most unappreciated-appreciated writer ever.

i clearly am not alone in my deep admiration and even my feeling that he wrote for me, or at least people like me. yet i have read a lot of qualifications about him today, in all the bios bouncing of the digital walls, after his perhaps timely death at ninety-one. there seemed to be a glut of qualifications, such as, “because so many writers have followed in his footsteps, he can almost seem a parody of himself” and other more notorious reviews from when his works were first published, bad reviews from the likes of such luminaries as joan didion and john updike, dismissing some of my favorite stories of his as “trivial” and “self-indulgent”. it made me wonder, in his defense, ‘if something contains a reflection of the self, does that make it self-indulgent?’

it is suggested that this clouded reception to his work, post-catcher in the rye, is why salinger retreated into complete and utter obscurity, vowing never to publish again until he was dead and gone. whatever the reason and whatever kind of person he was (all the talk is that he was not so nice of a guy), he had bouts of post traumatic stress-disorder and issues with lovers and children. but it doesn’t really matter. at least not to me. i am as interested in the reclusive mysterious side of him as much as anyone, and i am eager to read anything else that gets published (apparently he wrote almost everyday since retreating into obscurity, in the early sixties, when he last published). but what i truly have from him remains and has always been separate from him. his words, organized in mostly short prose pieces that break apart life in this insane universe and societal stew and let us see the beauty and the suffering in the cracks. they provide a stimulating feeling of intimacy, in that we feel we are being let in on an open-secret that no one has admitted to until now. our personal madness it turns out is shared.

i think the main issue that his detractors and even his apologists have, is that they thought he was winking at us; playing the smart ass with his “intentionally bad grammar and his sparse, zen-like phrasing. perhaps they looked at him as a version of today’s hipster with irony worn on their sleeve (or at least their t-shirts).

but he wasn’t winking at us. he was crying.

make me unified
i may not be real
i may just be the pieces someone found
a collage of angst
from adolescent scissors
scraps of books
fed to the lions
so that they could know what it is they are eating
and what it is that we felt
when we were relevant
when we knew what everything meant
and everything meant something
when we cared so much that it ached
in places they say were never real to begin with
and they looked at us like we were precious
and dumb
but we were so much smarter then
with our pores clogged by passion
stumbling into ditches on back road ecstasy
of moonlit sonatas and death as candy
off the reservation
with no lack of obligation
we all went down
one by one
even as we gripped each others souls
and swore we’d never let go
with teenage claws
sharpened by grasping at everything we could reach
we eventually succumbed
all of us
to the comfort of planned obsolecence
they have made us into molds
so that the machines would have an easier time with us
so that we would fit
into the places they had made for us
convenient parking
regard for real estate
a place to work, breed and die
real estate is fake
and efficiency is highly overrated

you can shine tonight
that’s what you’re supposed to do
make yourself bright
because the visibility is low
here in the place i thought i’d find you
it’s bigger than i remember
and i usually remember things
so much bigger than they actually are
maybe they were that big
at some point
anyway there are so many people here
with a lot to talk about but not much to say
the din is deafening
and the beer light can only guide me so far
bring me to where you are
i am strong enough to go there
i just need help finding my way

barry rosenthal @ getty images

my thoughts are arched
to the curve of your back
the beat of your brow
hands pushing time
time pushing me
across the line
you know, “the line”
but it’s not a line at all it turns out
it’s a shadow
that draws a
perfect circle
around the places that we think we’re heading
but we’re not going there
not tonight
so make me
like i am making you right now
into something that does not have a name
only a shape and a dotted line
point it towards yourself
and let it go

mimas, saturn’s moon
image courtesy of: http://www.spaceinfo.com.au/mimas20081203.html

slick sunrise
you know who you are
blond sweat and broken dreams
the narcotic ecstasy
of sleeping while others toil

i cut my leg on broken fence
drunk stumbling
i am bleeding on the world
and the world is bleeding on me
there are no words
for the things that we want

silence makes the morning come
in an alchemical haze
we awake
to find they’ve taken the best
and you say, don’t worry
the best wasn’t good enough

still from ‘the seventh seal’ by ingmar bergman, 1957

say you know what i mean
without me having to say more about it
the simple breaths one takes
the beginning kisses

i can’t hold you tonight
my arms won’t reach
and my soul is on ice
i can’t find fingers anywhere
that will dial your number
or delve in for pleasure
i am alone
and alone in being alone

i didn’t understand
but i knew what you meant
about the shape
that the steam made on the mirror
i said i couldn’t, but i saw it
i just read it another way

http://miyaandostanoff.deviantart.com/

i was in wet grass midwest samadi
counting stars
lying next to you
on god’s lawn

we noticed perfection
how it has endless miles to travel
before it reaches our skin
and so many stories to tell
once it has arrived

but before it reaches the end
it is gone again
dawn hides the writing
that the moon let us read

there maybe only one life
but there are so many bodies
in and out of the ground
we grow
like weeds
we take shape
from the seeds that are planted
by the hands that we hide

death will be a room
where we change
into the skin that surrounds us
and the skin that we surround
huddled in boxes
diving into the sunset
i wear you when i want to feel
like i have nothing on

edward ruscha, western, 1991

remember what we said
about what we wouldn’t forget

when we were on fire
and there was no end
to our beginning

we move so quickly
that we forget what we want
and what we want forgets us

it’s only fair, though
that our thoughts would drift
as we reached those once-distant hills

they came up on us so quickly

and before we knew it
the horizon had changed
and there was an ocean
where our garden was supposed to be

we didn’t have time
but time certainly had us

and i forgot the names that i had given
to the secrets that we kept
all the maps i had made without a compass
ended up being the lines
of our palms connecting
making a loop
leading us in circles

but we are round like a ring
and we fill up the center
with what we don’t know
with what we feel

and sometimes
we get it right

inside the breath
that travels before my face
there is a vision
and a song
with curves that lead me home
and hooks that keep me holding on

there’s a persistent beat to the sunrise
like the sound of men falling
and women waking up

babies that have yet to be born
are wailing just beyond the skyline

somewhere underneath it all
in upside down alleyways
there are needles going into the red
and engines that are about to catch fire

when you go below again
tell them i said hi
tell them i probably won’t be back
not anytime soon

Abstract Needle,Knot & Thread #2 Reloaded : Version #2
Piazza Cadorna – Milan

when you gaze into the infinite sunrise
whose face do you see
do the parts come together
or do they just spill out
across the ocean and the miles
into the cracks of canyons
and the curves of country roads

my wet dreams
your dry summer
when everything just caught fire
and burned
until there was nothing left

nothing burns in winter
not unless we want it to

stark sunrise: www.whoartnow.co.uk/abstract1.php