Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Sign Language.


I don't pray. Not like I should, anyway. Not in that, "Thank you for waking me up/pray in all situations, good and bad" kind of way that you're taught to. I pray over meals, and in airplanes before takeoff and after landing. I pray most times when asked to, and occasionally in times of need. But not every day; not every morning and night.

For the longest, I didn't know how. I'd heard the rhetoric about how form doesn't matter nearly as much as substance and sincerity. About how there are no "magic words," and that one should simply converse with God as though He were just another being standing in the room. I'd tried, quietly in my own head and aloud in my own solitude. I knew I'd be heard if I spoke the words. Otherwise, it just felt like I was thinking to myself. Long ago - back in the days when I took a knee in the corner and prayed before every hockey game I played in, much like I'd seen my heroes do in the pros - I was taught that there was no hope in praying for specific outcomes. Rather, you should pray for the virtues that would encourage you to be the arbiter of your own progress. Fortitude, patience, leadership, discernment, grace ... I was a pro at asking for any of those.

But times have changed. As I find myself consistently questioning where I am currenly stationed in life, what it's doing, and how much longer I can stand to take part, my prayers have become increasingly selfish and specific as needed. What to do, where to go, does it matter. Get me out, help me see, place me where I need to be. Change my life, change my surroundings, change my heart. With increased selfish surety and intensity has come, to a point, increased frequency. The conversations have come almost easily, some aloud and some pointedly occurring as one-and-a-half-way conversations in my head during my quiet moments. "Be still."

This morning, I was still. Wednesday mornings are always difficult and today was unlike any other. I've been traveling, for business and pleasure, in the last couple of weeks and I have been bitten by the travel bug. I've had the experience to be away from this city, out with friends, not thinking or looking back at where I've come from. Laughing. Breathing. The the result of a travel weekend is always a difficult, slow, dragging week. And in the middle of every difficult, slow, dragging week is a Wednesday. I woke up with the same feeling of dread-cum-sadness that meets me most mornings when I'm feeling as though I am one-hundred percent in the wrong place. Rolling out of bed and into the shower always feels like more of a chore than a wake-me-up, but more often than not I'm able to make it in a decent elapsed time. Today was no different. Or so I thought.

Standing in the water, I prayed. It was quiet. I was still. Conversational to a point. The questions and requests were minute and grandiose all at once: Show me a way out; show me that what I do is worth it; show me where I need to be; pass along a sign to help me understand. Hundreds of hundreds of thousands of people ask for signs every minute of every day. We ask because we want to believe that it's that simple - that something will show up in front of us that tells us exactly what we want to hear. And we will believe it, because it's is just that: it's what we want to hear. Please, God, show me a sign to give me some direction because otherwise I'm drowning standing up.

I pray that prayer and I stay silent. The shower ends, the uniform goes on, the door is locked, the day officially begins. More often than not, a standing prayer is forgotten. It almost becomes inconsequential. The day goes on without it being given a second thought. But somewhere in my normal, hump day morning so much akin to so many others, my phone vibrated. I thought nothing of it until I took a moment to read the text message that came through. A picture. A picture of a little girl I'd known some months ago. A former client of mine, now adopted and on her way to living the normal life everyone wanted her to have amongst family. She, all of two years old, was dressed with a backpack strapped to her, wretching her face at the camera. The caption was simple: "[She] going to school." I responded simply in kind, remarking on how adorable she is. The response to that was much longer, and telling in the way that signs tend to be. Her intelligence was quantified; the pride her mother has in her magnified. They're moving, and they vowed to see me before they go. I was thanked, profusely, and made aware of how much love they have for me. And I hadn't given this child a second thought since she exited my caseload. But they still thank me, even now, some many months after the fact. And the love. The love.

There's an inherent danger in asking for signs. Two, in fact. One is that there's no guarantee that your sign will be clear. You're left, then, seeing EVERYTHING as a sign to be interpreted. Little is not imputed with some deeper meaning that you develop in your own mind to meet your own motives. The second is thus related: we make signs say what we want them to, and in the case of clear ones, ignore them completely if they don't fit into our narrative. Thus, purpose defeated. We want our God to tell us what we want to hear like everybody else, and if not, then to meet our silent prayers with silent response.

As you can imagine, I was puzzled. This could have been my sign. This could have been exactly what I prayed for being manifested in one random happenstance, playing out on my Blackberry. But it doesn't fit my narrative. It doesn't comport to the story that I'm trying to tell with my life. It doesn't afford me the agency that I asked for, or the big red 'EXIT' sign that I've been begging for. It's an affirmation - proof that I do matter, despite my own second-guessing and despite my feelings of outright helplessness. It's an assuredness that proves my worth as more than a cog in this infernal machine, but as a human who touches people on an individual level and helps them walk across their own personal finish line. I matter, no matter how much I may hate Wednesday mornings. Or Mondays. Or the other days that don't begin with an S and aren't federal holidays. No matter how much I despise 5:00pm every Sunday because it signals the backside of the weekend. I still touch people's lives. Intimately.

I met the picture, the ensuing text message, and the second picture that bookended the conversation with some mix of sadness, disapproval, confusion, and indifference. The stories didn't line up (does that negate the call-and-response that God and I may have involved ourselves in today?), so what difference did it make? I achieved some self-congratulation, but that doesn't mean I get to stop here. I may have received an answer that should cause me to dive in headlong and dedicate myself to the craft I practice, rather than toeing the line and feeling like a fish out of water. Or I may have been the victim of one of fate's silly, condescending coincidences. I may never know.

The day has wound to a close, and I am no closer to understanding what happened today than I was when it happened. However, I know better than to close the conversation. I know to Be Still. To listen, to observe. To be aware, with an open mind and heart, and stay alert to the times when that one-and-a-half-way conversation becomes a two-way street. Rather than deny its existence, I'd be far better served to inhale its presence - to repeat my prayers, to continue my walk, and never lose sight of life on the ground.

Be still, and hear the voice of God.

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Day 3

I woke trying to put a name to the unknown;
trying to develop sense that extended beyond the concrete under my feet.
Brick and mortar being to belief.

Each step assigned proof to falsehoods long known to be deified gospel,
shaking to the core a system of words given life through poison breath without reason to be;
a gift of cursed delusion never questioned but only exalted through anonymity.

Who is, was, or ever will be?

The street caved beneath me,
an earthen reminder of dust begetting dust as its core swallowed me whole.
Falling up,
ascension through subtraction.
Lights and signs and truisms lost to chasmic cosmos,
chaotic indulgences of a lesser-known.
Control defined not as leashed direction but as unbridled suspension;
dynamic stasis.

Grasping at air the color of denial,
finding life's mystery in the songs of those long defeated
but never lost to immortal love.
Calling out to no one for no such thing.
Clawing at never.
Horns and sirens and panic-stricken masses of brittle blood,
liquid bone,
never arrived to attest to what befell my descent -
the world hadn't disintegrated beneath their feet
leaving them to decipher glyphs on walls made of ground,
or set their ears afire with words from worlds unseen -
no one else had been tasked as human sand in celestial hourglass
with giving title to what is not known.
Only me,
left midflight with one stirring thought,
one rhyme, its sing-song singeing itself into suited flesh:


"What is and will be waits for no name;
And that which once was n'er once did the same."

NaPoMo 2013

I'm participating in National Poetry Month's 30 Day Challenge for the first time ever. Even got myself an accountability partner, which helps more than you can imagine.

I'm not following any scheme... no particular prompts (yet). Just going with one a day and seeing what comes of it. Considering taking the 30 and automatically creating a chapbook out of it.

I'll share the ones I want to various places online... some have hit my tumblr; some will be here. Just support me in my journey, if you can. I appreciate it.

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Love Like A Sunset ...

Your effect on my habit is undeniable.

Unfettered, each step toward the hint of normalcy that returns
every morning beyond my coffee cup
Paling in comparison to the black bottom of a soul
left unlit yet enlightened
Punctuated by a pallid memory of unmade manifesto
malnurtured between here and office walls
Destroying sentiments of certitude
conveniently always right where left
under squandered misanthropic musings
A series of words not sentences
sentenced to die behind those eyes iced over
Glazed rounds not sweet sour sold on sordid
soiled sheets of loose leaf netbook paper
Twisted cavorted caroling
consoling souls of mischevious intent
not intending current consequence or subsequent conference
concurrent with conventional discord \\

So she says; dissonant spiral

Monday, December 17, 2012

Porto ...

I want to learn the language of you:
the one spoken informally, at home under your skin
between two tin cans stretching sinew from here to the half-moon.
Teach me on nude floorboards over darjeeling
how to converse fluently with your essence
until words give way; until horizons birth tomorrow through shuttered walls.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Unsettled ...


She is my Marla Singer: the one who hates me so much, I could die.

And I am the worst thing to ever happen to her.

Lit cigarette, hair a raging mess. Shades so big the darkness envelops her. The attitude is in her walk: a cat strut that is equal parts "fuck me" and "fuck you." It's only after she comes to her senses that she remembers to cast me aside. The lucidity that arrives on the south side of an orgasm never ceases to snap one back to reality. From king to commoner in a little less than slow blink of the eyes. I become the vessel, a mere means to an end as old as time, while each of my vices come back into view. And that is precisely the moment she chooses to look elsewhere. It's as if I'm the cancer - some sort of malignant growth on her perfectly cupped ass that she can't wait to cut out. Or maybe a boil. Yes. A boil: painful, annoying, but harmless enough to keep around with the hope that it will burst all by itself. If she's waiting for me to implode like some kind of neutron star...

But the sex. Oh, the sex.

She lets me fuck her like the animal that I am - biting, gnawing, scratching, clawing. The cigarette burns on the side of the bed like an idling taxi in the rain, ready to take her back to the bowels of the urban hell she calls home. She wants me. Her moans melt into screams that turn into echoes of silence bouncing off the walls of my mind.  Most nights I leave my body, watching from above like some existential pervert at a ten-cent peep show while the shadow of myself slams wildly into her. It's as if I can disconnect from an act that by its very nature can be no more distant. It's all very mechanical, really; there is no love there. No emotion. In. Out. In. Out. Switch. Move this. Grab that. I only kiss her to shut her up.

(The neighbors. Nosy as hell, and always apt to complain. Never in words. Just judgmental stares. Even their dog. Snotty little shit.)

Day or night, she tells me when she's ready. I have no say in the matter. Always ready to deliver. FedSex. The call used to come attached to a tale, but no longer. No more drunken nights or emotional voids. No more self-pity or self-destruction. No words: she comes; we fuck; we cum; she goes. There exists neither rhyme nor reason. Only Trojan. Pleasantries are for people who care. We can't share in what was never there. But whether or not the story starts the same, we always arrive at the same last page: smoke, strut, slam, stairs, screech, silence. Me, limp-dicked and alone, picking at my frayed nerve endings, licking my emotional wounds, and wondering why in the hell I've never flipped this goddamned mattress.

She is the stain. All of the stains. And she doesn't know what I've been through. She doesn't know what I can take. I can keep at this all day; this ruse of amorphous amour. The sloppy, slovenly shitshow that is every drop-everything-and-rendezvous. If I could just scrape the taste of her rotted, rugged kiss from the roof of my mouth...

She will never get to me.

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

The Sky in Front...


The allure of faint whispers.
Into you I crawl,
a beast in your being;
welcome alien.
Absolved by the colors of your sin.
Your secrets swallow me whole.
Beside you in time.
Breathe life into each recess;
exhale across my lips the words your mother taught you.
Your story best told behind closed eyes
entangled in twisted silken sheets
and heard through thin walls by ears unknown.
Think thoughts of forgiveness burned black.
Defy the day.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

See and Believe.

The answers are in the stars. They always have been. On nights lonely and cold, but clear to the heavens, one can always look up and see exactly what he needs to be told. No longer hating the way he feels, the stars outline the perfect path to peace - the peace he seeks without ever looking within.

We've become accustomed to asking the outside world to cut a path which we can follow. How rare is it that we look down and forge forth of our own volition? Masters of our destinies we are not; rather, slaves to celestial cartography. Drifters on the open plains of time, illuminated by specks of light that shone so brightly light-years away.

Drifters. Vagrants with no home in space or time. Hopelessly wandering the great beyond that is right in front of our faces. Crossing the chasms between us, discovering each other in ourselves. Walking, talking tragedies.

But the stars know. And from them, we are found.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Never Lose It ...

So where do I begin?
Properly: where you end,
a blown kiss in the wind imagined under city lights.

The story remains the same.

Monday, March 7, 2011

906 103 0711

If I am brother to the night call her sister to the rain:
blood beats staccato drops upon my heartstrings;
blasts neo-tribal rhythms through frozen aqueducts;
A piece of peace on the precipice of higher learning,
bestow nirvana, future fantastic.
She rolls like thunder.
And I hear her cry
breaking deafening silence through gritted teeth and shadows borne.
Her words are mountains,
her scars like the grooves of her favorite 45 -
mellow, melodic pulsing funk beneath broken skin
salted with teary-eyed wonder.

I see the jungles in her eyes.