and now aaron realizes exactly where his life went wrong. at one point he was allowed to leave the country, alone. and during the course of this, after many adventures that would serve as good stories back in america, he found himself on a random path to a cabin in the mountains in the middle of nowhere, even by norwegian standard, and random travelers going in the other direction offered him (who didn't particularly drink) some kind of liquor, and he took it, because he had picked up on the cultural idea that it would be rude not to accept it once offered. from this point on, aaron could no longer live in america.

Mausoleum

On the floor
lie the
remains of
the glass you broke
when you lost the will
to function
today.
And you
are a ghost
to yourself today
and you tell me not to worry
as if I can trust you or anyone
when they tell me everything
anything
will be okay,
will be all right.

And you have given me an excuse I've long needed
to pretend I don't even live here
with your haunting optimism and its cynical underpinnings
telling me we can pretend:
to believe,
to care,
to live,
and so on,
because for me this is just a hobby
and a waiting game for when everything comes together
and maybe I was a gullible child
but I never believed in winning,
and do we even have a choice?
Gathering our possessions we shift
underground
nocturnal
and gather the broken, jagged pieces
and in a dust-choked marble reliquary
they will wait for us to
make a move.

St. Francis

And so we almost die:
a no-fault collision,
and a creeping guilt conquering like a viral
Emperor of the West.
Enthroned European
and beaming,
certainly
(I think passing through the corridor
with the graphic crucifixes
and No Smoking signs)
we have taken a wrong turn.
And I have betrayed myself.
Trust, as a conceptual issue
has lost all of the relevance
it has never deserved:
we need to be made
to believe
and I
am okay
with that.
Hell of a legacy
we inherited,
I guess.

I need
to believe
I need to believe
in a revision;
in an insecure Jesus,
self-doubting and full of missteps and
awkward pauses waiting to unleash themselves
upon future Canonical editors
("This too shall pass.")
and embarrassingly stuttered speeches
from hilltops, eyes fixed on the sun-scorched soil.
A minor boost to His self-confidence,
from the news of Judas Iscariot and the Legion,
because one betrayal pales in comparison to the
Twelve that kept him awake at nights,
and so gave him something to live for long enough
to die.
And yet the scholars tell me I am wrong,
casting about ideas like stones
by children in some past
free from the reality that has severed it's own,
but
here in this shrine of desperation and hope and loss
coexist this macabre symbol of I don't even know anymore
with all the corporate advances of modern medicine,
and in passing I think:
maybe I am on to something.
The teachings are not in what is said
or done
or passed on in any way,
and yet,
we've learned
to not trust ourselves,
and that sounds bad,
I know,
I know,
but think
of the options.

Obligation

You realize
you've forgotten how to keep secrets
not because of any mid-level joy at
unleashing the mystery of the ancients
or whatever worthless gossip is getting around
or having others look upon you as a someone,
with the indefinite article,
but rather
because you can know longer tell the difference
between what things everyone should know
and the things you shouldn't tell.
And this is probably more of the whole suitcase
full of unexplored troubles
left for when you have less time to dwell
(if I've taught you anything.)
And please don't point out that I'm
trying
too hard when I say things like
I'm sorry I had to watch you die,
but I still remember when you said things like
you don't understand why we only write in black in white:
it just seems to ingrain a lack of possibility.
But here
I want to tell you all of my secrets
and I realize
realized
that, on the one hand,
I have
on another
(wait)
that doesn't hold you apart from
anyone I've ever met.
Well, there I go again.

Investation

Sol fell back into some time-warp trust-fall waking –up-just-before-you-hit-the-ground drifting off at his desk mess. Some redeemed Judas veteran of, oh so many bullshit campaigns and vindictive… not even machismo but just the worst part of growing up and now that’s all forgiven. Glided into the room. There’s Brird too young to look the same but he was always one of those poor bastards who looks ready to check out or at least retire by the first time an “uncle” or some other ersatz easy-come-easy-go father figure taught him to ride a bike, pushing pushing pushing and then letting go and who’s there to pick him up off the ground? Yeah that’s what Sol got the first time they even met, and all that happened since was just the outside catching up to what you’d pick up in the first ten minutes (OVER & OVER) if you ever had the misfortune of getting the guy drunk. And now, thirteen years later (earlier) here he is all stripped down and playing some off-Broadway Dante, or. It all hangs on who Sol is supposed to be here, Virgil or Scrooge or, what, an origin story? But he’s getting ahead here, there’s the full crew. Vinnie “Scorch” Jinkins, with absolutely no story worth telling behind his nickname, not even a pyro which probably sets him apart from the great bulk of his hereditary neighborhood, but a good guy to have around when you need some Big Talking, hyperbolizing and the like. Jinkins unlike so many others never made the transition from Adolescent Liar to Successful Businessman, and only exists now to Sol for the purposes of this experience, being the kind of guy you lose touch with once and can’t even recognize his face aged beyond all recognition half a year later. Donny comes in, pure theater, all flash and unnecessary singing with that damn tenor-y vibrato that Sol can’t, never could, stand, but Donny (and he’s definitely the “once a Donny, always a Donny” type) was always bearable in small doses as long as you didn’t aspire to His aspirations. Sol almost recognizes the song even but realizes it doesn’t matter, and Donny is flanked by three Chris’s. Two would’ve been enough really number three wasn’t even around what, more than a summer and change? and for an instant in the peripheral they were almost keeping up to the rhythm, snapping, maybe wearing some kind of matching hats and get-ups, but no, that’s just Donny not even content to have his own Production going on here in Sol’s mind but simply MUST get the whole crew involved. And that’s when in a flash of consciousness Sol finds the whole thing a little skeleton, even in the little mental room engineered specifically for these Ghosts of the Past we’re talking some kind of medieval Great Hall but none of the guests, Viking warriors with the whole horned helm and blood-crusted axe deal, Saxon princes and wine that wouldn’t even pass for spoiled by modern standards but got the job done for Priest and Pagan alike, even made it to the place just a ragged bunch of younger by the minute – what – former ACQUINTANCES? Sol isn’t even asleep anymore and the whole thing crashes onto him and he’s got no one to go to, and he just thinks to himself (out loud, but in a drooling mumble) well if this isn’t human I don’t know what is.
“Eeh thee ivn’t hoo men ah dunft no wuv if,” more or less. None of this even seemed like a contemporary problem, as troubling as it instantly was. Maybe some kind of deep seated emotional issues, in fact, sure, sure. But really at the core of it was that Sol was the most normal person he knew. He was completely regular and kept his meltdowns regular and decent and civil and really who has any friends at his age? A center would be nice but that isn’t even what friends were for, and at the same time a Different Sol – an alter-ego that shared conscience and body and split only in Key Moments when the True Sol lost himself in – “thought”?? – and panicked and got some crazy regular ideas and instead had his own personal moments but in a completely optimistic (and, therefore, quite suspect) key – turned on the television, a barely color TV set lingering in the back of True Sol’s and Different Sol’s collective mind that occasionally found its way dangerously forward, and reminded the both that all this talk of friendship and center was almost entirely plagiarized from a handful of early 80’s situation-comedies and some accompanying advertising spots. Well anyway, the whole Viking Hall fantasy was done now, not even drifted away. Not even something obvious like television snow or “Th-th-that’s all, folks!” just gone and more-or-less forgotten and Sol realized he had the first five or six notes of some song he couldn’t even recognize in his head.
“La, la-la, mah mahhhwww,” and so on.
By now the sun was on its way up. One of these nights. Again, can’t be a good sign, but what would be… eight hours of sleep? Probably a bit defensive, Sol found the whole business just too routine. He slept when he was tired, which once again came around when he should’ve probably been waking up – should in this case not entirely objective, but there were health and social concerns at play, even if we were to write off (as Sol was almost too consciously in his head, lying on the couch and hadn’t even bothered to take his shoes off) career concerns as, what, hegemonic, unnatural? This wasn’t really his line, but once in a while – not often – Sol would become downright angry about the whole capitalist nine-to-five conspiracy dragging us all down into some kind of routine clockwork sun worship ordeal which left little for the nocturnal members of society. Not even Under, just perpetually some kind of Inverted class, Those Who Dwell in the Incorrect Timezone. Why is that even, he finally came back to. Some kind of curse? Bad karma? Please just no more of the pop psychology tonight, especially when Sol found insomnia so easy to rationalize. It was around this point, skirting the edges of possible psychological issues and the Death of the Day that he without warning drifted off.

Investation

Sol fell back into some time-warp trust-fall waking –up-just-before-you-hit-the-ground drifting off at his desk mess. Some redeemed Judas veteran of, oh so many bullshit campaigns and vindictive… not even machismo but just the worst part of growing up and now that’s all forgiven. Glided into the room. There’s Brird too young to look the same but he was always one of those poor bastards who looks ready to check out or at least retire by the first time an “uncle” or some other ersatz easy-come-easy-go father figure taught him to ride a bike, pushing pushing pushing and then letting go and who’s there to pick him up off the ground? Yeah that’s what Sol got the first time they even met, and all that happened since was just the outside catching up to what you’d pick up in the first ten minutes (OVER & OVER) if you ever had the misfortune of getting the guy drunk. And now, thirteen years later (earlier) here he is all stripped down and playing some off-Broadway Dante, or. It all hangs on who Sol is supposed to be here, Virgil or Scrooge or, what, an origin story? But he’s getting ahead here, there’s the full crew. Vinnie “Scorch” Jinkins, with absolutely no story worth telling behind his nickname, not even a pyro which probably sets him apart from the great bulk of his hereditary neighborhood, but a good guy to have around when you need some Big Talking, hyperbolizing and the like. Jinkins unlike so many others never made the transition from Adolescent Liar to Successful Businessman, and only exists now to Sol for the purposes of this experience, being the kind of guy you lose touch with once and can’t even recognize his face aged beyond all recognition half a year later. Donny comes in, pure theater, all flash and unnecessary singing with that damn tenor-y vibrato that Sol can’t, never could, stand, but Donny (and he’s definitely the “once a Donny, always a Donny” type) was always bearable in small doses as long as you didn’t aspire to His aspirations. Sol almost recognizes the song even but realizes it doesn’t matter, and Donny is flanked by three Chris’s. Two would’ve been enough really number three wasn’t even around what, more than a summer and change? and for an instant in the peripheral they were almost keeping up to the rhythm, snapping, maybe wearing some kind of matching hats and get-ups, but no, that’s just Donny not even content to have his own Production going on here in Sol’s mind but simply MUST get the whole crew involved. And that’s when in a flash of consciousness Sol finds the whole thing a little skeleton, even in the little mental room engineered specifically for these Ghosts of the Past we’re talking some kind of medieval Great Hall but none of the guests, Viking warriors with the whole horned helm and blood-crusted axe deal, Saxon princes and wine that wouldn’t even pass for spoiled by modern standards but got the job done for Priest and Pagan alike, even made it to the place just a ragged bunch of younger by the minute – what – former ACQUINTANCES? Sol isn’t even asleep anymore and the whole thing crashes onto him and he’s got no one to go to, and he just thinks to himself (out loud, but in a drooling mumble) well if this isn’t human I don’t know what is.
“Eeh thee ivn’t hoo men ah dunft no wuv if,” more or less. None of this even seemed like a contemporary problem, as troubling as it instantly was. Maybe some kind of deep seated emotional issues, in fact, sure, sure. But really at the core of it was that Sol was the most normal person he knew. He was completely regular and kept his meltdowns regular and decent and civil and really who has any friends at his age? A center would be nice but that isn’t even what friends were for, and at the same time a Different Sol – an alter-ego that shared conscience and body and split only in Key Moments when the True Sol lost himself in – “thought”?? – and panicked and got some crazy regular ideas and instead had his own personal moments but in a completely optimistic (and, therefore, quite suspect) key – turned on the television, a barely color TV set lingering in the back of True Sol’s and Different Sol’s collective mind that occasionally found its way dangerously forward, and reminded the both that all this talk of friendship and center was almost entirely plagiarized from a handful of early 80’s situation-comedies and some accompanying advertising spots. Well anyway, the whole Viking Hall fantasy was done now, not even drifted away. Not even something obvious like television snow or “Th-th-that’s all, folks!” just gone and more-or-less forgotten and Sol realized he had the first five or six notes of some song he couldn’t even recognize in his head.
“La, la-la, mah mahhhwww,” and so on.
By now the sun was on its way up. One of these nights. Again, can’t be a good sign, but what would be… eight hours of sleep? Probably a bit defensive, Sol found the whole business just too routine. He slept when he was tired, which once again came around when he should’ve probably been waking up – should in this case not entirely objective, but their were health and social concerns at play, even if we were to write off (as Sol was almost too consciously in his head, lying on the couch and hadn’t even bothered to take his shoes off) career concerns as, what, hegemonic, unnatural? This wasn’t really his line, but once in a while – not often – Sol would become downright angry about the whole capitalist nine-to-five conspiracy dragging us all down into some kind of routine clockwork sun worship ordeal which left little for the nocturnal members of society. Not even Under, just perpetually some kind of Inverted class, Those Who Dwell in the Incorrect Timezone. Why is that even, he finally came back to. Some kind of curse? Bad karma? Please just no more of the pop psychology tonight, especially when Sol found insomnia so easy to rationalize. It was around this point, skirting the edges of possible psychological issues and the Death of the Day that he without warning drifted off.

Strangers

and they are a little bit crazy
not quite
the raving in the street
demanding nickels and
sentencing the others to Hell and beyond
but still;
we entered single file
not even a grim procession
in fact
nothing remarkable at all.
The Russians
looked like cops,
and who are we then?
And in a wandering
I have
for you
the time
- a diversion.
Because
that is what this all
all
is,
(don't believe that)
but we approach
(together)
that crucial
key
moment when you realize
the people around you
are goddamned insane
and maybe
just maybe
your oversensitive cultural analysis
ain't worth a damn
to anyone who is not
because a conspiracy theory
is a conspiracy theory
auf jeden Fall
and this just isn't your
target
audience, really now
is it?
And so we aim higher.

Henry A. Cotton

A process-
induced-
state has
overtaken us.
We can hardly keep our eyes open.
And our questions of
compatability
are suddenly -
antiquated.
It is a common goal uniting us:
intention.
And counter:
application.
And the kitchen counters
reflect this disparity.
Career makers for the future
archaelogists of motivation,
feelings,
and other 20th century nonsense.
And the reason
for this simply inexcusable
bedroom
is that, in our way,
we do not want to know what things are
when what they mean
is what gets
the patients
out of bed.
This
is the groundwork
of modern sociology.
And its obviousness
strikes at my
Inner Conflict
(and yours? Can I know this?)
because the groundwork
of modern physics:
tiny particles,
have absoultely no symbolic meaning to
me, struggling just to make the damn bed.

Recap. It is Wednesday, September 23ish, I am in Munich. I have a mild cold, which has become progressively and consistently worse since early this morning when I first decided that it was not actually allergies, and that the accompanying tiredness and negative effects for social skills could prove disastrous for the next week or so (a period during which I may potentially become -temporarily- without residence.) So, there's that. It is because of this that I am "home," resting, and not at the ballet, although in all honesty I would not be there anyway, and would probably instead be reading or not reading at the student bar next-door, making a point of not talking to the (generally loud) American exchange students. I have no desire to become part of the American ex-pat community. Is this because as an American I was trained to distruct "communities"? I'll come back to this. hearts and minds, friends.

I am mildly dissappointed that my notebook I bought specifically for the point of writing in, after the last was filled to capacity, is still more-or-less blank except for travel essentials and phone numbers of people I was too afraid to call because they will talk to me in German, or in any event, with spoken words. There is a two-page diagram of the general plot for an as yet untitled novel, but, that's what there is. One of the subplots is based around the main character receiving a package not addressed to him that an industriously lazy postman tricks him into signing for, only to discover that the addressee is chronically not at home, for months on end. This is a true story. I still have the package. My neighbor suspects it is stereoids (based on prior knowledge of the individual in question) but I don't think that will make for a very exciting conclusion. Suggestions? Should I pretend that I studied English Lit and just make it empty? Should I just forget to ever bring it up again, so that everyone wonders? Anyway, I probably should start writing with the beginning. When I am back in Kassel?

Oh and just to make it official, I am planning to stay in Germany. I don't feel that I need a reason for this. It will be official once I go to extend my visa, because the office in Kassel requires things like proof that I have enough "money" to survive, which I obviously don't have due to all of my jobs being illegal under the table affairs, and also because I haven't remembered to put money in the bank for months and months. So I will do this. Also, find an apartment. That is probably less of a priority than it really should be, but, I mean, either way I have health insurance. And interesting people to talk to.

Oh, I did go to the "Oktoberfest." That is what everyone thinks of Germany, so I felt it important to go see that so I can conform my stories to people's expectations. That sounds bad, but really, it is the essence of human culture. Imagine if I were to write a short-story about the time I, thinking I was accidentally an illegal alien, tried to extend my visa, only to discover, after many frantic hours of document-gathering and bureaucratic circus-acts, that my visa was actually valid for another 8 months or so but I had been confused because dates are written backwards in the US and I wrote all of the dialog(ue) in the original German! No one wants that, especially not me, since I severely failed the writing portion of my German exam, without regrets.

Oh and in the, um, otherwise, column, the "Oktoberfest" was actually fun and interesting and all good things and I bought souvenirs and drank a liter of beer and spent all day talking about buying a hat which I never did, because of cost-benefit. I met people from places, predominantly Munich, which was quite surprising. I learned one song, but I don't know the words very well or exactly. All in all I'd say I know this song about as well as I know "Born to Run," which means I can sing along and as long as the song is playing loudly in the background, or others are singing with me, you'd never know that I really only know the last word of each line. That's alright.

Accents can be funny things. I have nothing further on this topic.

And that is all, I just wanted to write and let everyone know I am writing. No obligations on anyone (ever??) If anyone ever wants to come to Germany, I can highly recommend that because it is Someplace New. Obviously this doesn't hold true if you are German, but it is Especially True if you live in Kansas "a.t.m." et cetera. I am going downstairs now. Goodnight moon.

Settle

I slept for days
and the seasons changed
as suddenly as
twelve hours can pass without
you realizing
you don't feel
and this is not the
dreamlike state
it once was;
was it?
Everything's gravitated
towards some abstract
point
that can't even be bothered
to stay centered,
and in this half second
I feel it
overly audacious,
to use a word other than hopeless,
to plan for the next twenty years
when the planning itself
will
surely take forty
at any rate.
And it's creeping
like a slow foreshadowing
of a cliched good to evil
morality play
ending on a note of quiet redemption:
optimistic,
reverent,
and utterly boring.
like technology,
harbored into quiet quarters
of the social landscape
holding us hostage to our
new vocabulary
and the desperation of necessity
and our need to control remotely
the whole spectrum:
it's inherently violent;
mathematical.
And we
are
not

Cup of Gold

The tracks left behind
are more pristine even
than the blanket white
fallen in the perfect,
by chance, empty column
flanked by ever-greens
as the brightly colored
racers soar, glide down
the awkward angled slope
yet remain in the hinterground
unable to grasp focus
even from the simple frame
of twisted twigs and wire
much less the ancient oaken table
that anchors the floor to here,
this house to this mountain,
and even unadorned and barren
spells

The ceiling beams
cross like those below:
only incidentally,
and the muted ballet,
hearth-inspired,
spider-webs into a thousand lives,
muraled across the breadth
of this vastness, natural,
and this forest, unobscured.
The obviousness of
the handmade
and tradition
is no bother,
reaching for a volume

Cat

Another level:
relatively speaking.
You've hardly touched your lunch.
The point is to become

so much
for metaphorically speaking.
Tend to your wounds,
seeping emotionally.
You're not a child.

(Innocent.)
This is repetition,
beyond
the pale.
We waited for the boats,
like anonymous Renoir faces,
but the river is too shallow.
There's a total lack of traffic.
Still.

We could stay here as long as
I wanted to.

Sink

I have written here a message for myself,
to remember the time.
Already the history is evident in the handwriting:
a bold, over-eager stroke giving way to a faltering
Ecclesiastical pessimism: this too is in vain.
For things fail.
The sun is too high, even in the late afternoon,
too blinding in the peripheral.
Seeing only these bony, unsteady knees,
there is so much I am afraid to try.
Psychological determinism,
alluded to in cornered hallways,
pretty much sums up the decade.
And
Christ
are there not
heroes
these days
?

Lacking today

A summer view
(it never rains here),
and how did you
grow up without a mother?

And let's be honest,
if we ever are,
lacking imagery: imagination,
this is not for you
in the way that the ocean
is not for the flocking
tourists,
or for any goddamned one,
inevitably,
and in the crimson (why
can't we just call it
red)
sunset, over the all-too
cliche
waterfront in some nameless Northeastern
town,
I can relax in the comforting thought
that this world is not for us.

Migration

Casting off the habit,
an intrinsic, if beleaguered, talent that
leads to new forms and outlets of human
behavior: namely, the collection of
vice. Slow, over rock and vale,
westward as you know it,
firmly right-brained and without
dialogue, our progress was.
A doctor, good at recovery,
an absolute Dedalus of a healer -
and that's on a good day -
is the part I will play in this
spectacle of rebranded invasion.
(Migration.)
And You,
the teacher,
lead by exemplar,
tall as tails, as
steady we marked
time on barks and faded, torn diary pages,
time on
slow enough.

Work-related

Also
in public parks
enclaved by electrical wires
transmitting,
contented they sat.
Sharing stories
the same
way each time, more-or-less
egalitarian retellings
and audience
interaction,
they formed
a semblance of optimism
about their flawed
insurrection,
using their own language against them.
Some careers do not go gently, rather
against the current, as is Dylan.
And undermining,
a culture built with shovels -
can we call that hollow?
Stray not, students.
The Narrenturm has been burned.
And I am encroached by fear that
I will sit, surely,
progressed
in an uncomfortable chair
seeing academia
as only a torch-bearing mob.
This timeline is flawed
as certain as Focault was whacked-out on LSD
and as the stars that twinkle are airplanes and
satellites
in all their glory.
These are not lies we tell ourselves:
hush, you do not believe in truth.
An archipelago of meaning
and meanings.
We left that park
(Moses has built a parking lot)
and
and
society must be defended.

Obelisk

Like a conquest
being together
is all about managing
distance.
The magnetic hum of
superficiality
and the core and anatomy
and I hate myself
for believing
that every love poem
is simply
a passing attempt by
the author to convince
the author
to believe
something he
or she
never imagined would feel
right in the core of their heart
and still does not.

A waking transgression
it is mid-morning.
I have not yet felt today
These are thoughts,
I think to myself,
but there is nothing behind them.
Am I losing you?
I've always treated opportunities
like these like
a window.
At best
at our most (childish)
optimistic
it makes for a dramatic exit
but the world in these
admittedly dull days
does not revolve around
hidden artifacts or car chases
and even if it does we have
still the same two problems, and I've lost my key.

On Knowing Too Damn Much

Instrumental,
and chambered.
The cliche:
life is options, pathways
and locked doors.
You can't have
et cetera.
And promises, well.
There's two types of people in that regard.
The sum of human knowledge:
creation is hard,
maintenance is harder.
A pipe organ,
ornamentally affixed.
Some have a purpose,
good for them,
I hope to believe one day.
Revolver-door,
well that's not an optimistic note
to end on.

Catacombs

Delving further,
blue-jeaned, and apocryphal,
suburban Dantes,
realizing they missed the
collective best (collective) years
of their lives.
The psychological study of death,
and dying.
(It's called thanatology.)
We lacked the time, incidentally.
And occidental, pacing forward
and have never
a thought to finish.
It is so important to have goals
and maybe not ideal
but practical
if they are but distance.

SDS

So here's the deal
in the greatest philosophical traditions
(black
and
white)
:
decision-making.
I've always aspired to
judge history
not by facts-
records, monuments,
Great Occurrences -
by rather by aspirations.
And with great spiritual revelation,
we can finally agree upon bitterness
in our discussions of the 60's;
they wanted things they hoped to
see realized.
What's the point?

Amethyst

It kills,
but I'm not any kind of painter,
and sad and beautiful should be
inspiring, of the highest order,
but comparisons fail.
Compliments
are ulterior motives, inherently,
with qualifiers,
and besides,
we've been down
that road,
and it is not my purpose
to backtrack.
I don't even want to understand,
I'm just asking for
a few words,
and a healthy appreciation.

Canon #2

Downhill,
a view,
and who will be healed?
I should say,
this heartland,
handfuls of tragical speeches,
allowed
this Kentucky wild
crashing aloud.
Passive onlookers?
Like an impressionist background
they have no future or past,
and,
hell,
no present.
Faith healers, and
cynicism as an opiate,
watching the boat races in our
Sunday best:
make me not care.

Pyramids

Twenty lines
inorganic and un-architectured,
like so much of human civilization
never occurred,
never came to pass.
Like American views on
forms: music, art,
philosophical discourse,
pre-ninteen-seventy:
abstract, not in a
centrally
planned-fashion, or artificial,
but rather,
not there,
like a ghost of a
Modern Man.
A recurring theme,
and a waking dream:
we're leaving this behind.

Canon

Canvassed
the inner-harbor
and nautical terms
like an inside joke,
sailors and their industry:
this is no place to grow up.
Maltese anachronism,
exotic as North Carolina
and the incessant swearing
to remind you
we're not kids anymore,
everything else aside.
The ships are the same
the faces might as well be
and the Broad Street bars,
cars and tourists,
it's all geography, socially
constructed.

The trend continues, threshing
a harvest - full quiver -
pictures of factories
and ambient mood lighting.
A grammatic race to the bottom,
our long walks on frozen rivers
and lakes, the two hard to differentiate
in this bleakest winter.
Tributary, ironclad shedding,
without respect for style or
formality - orbital,
broken locks.
Haunting the corridors
of the Paranoids' Union
the eternal we
stumbled over something
greater than the sum
and were lost in the citation,
writers.

The difference between a river and a lake
is the difference between you and I:
destination.
And so much more beyond that,
like a dam bursting (common)
overused but nevertheless something to behold
I'd have to imagine.
Beyond the geometric, and the
ostracized engineers
and the intricate politics of faulty construction,
only a thoughtless
overly political
college freshman
would call it utopian,
and anyone who would dare describe a flood as 'cleansing,'
has never seen a goddamned flood,
but at the bottom of the Atlantic,
Mid-West,
there are no rivers or lakes,
just water waiting to breathe.

Peaks

Pretend to enjoy the view,
hiding your goddamned fear of heights -
You owe it to yourself
to not let everyone down.
Your father told you
that if anyone ever hit you,
no matter who or where,
you will hit them back.
Maybe not the best advice,
but more coherent than
anything you ever learned in college.
Still you hoped for clarification
explanation -
what is your policy on emotional abuse?
And the self-esteem issues don't seem
best resolved through sheer force of will
looking out the thirty-third story window
over segregated neighborhoods
and Newark burning
feral and real
unlike anything in this cage.

Picture Postcards

Semi-apocryphal,
a love story devolved
into landscapes etched in green -
fodder for tourists
as a side-note,
and traded the mysterious
associations and nocturnal webs
for a laugh track.

A cure for paranoia
involving cloaks, no daggers,
and a thousand-year conspiracy,
heavy on the symbolism -
was your definition of education
in the twilight of our youth.
I had to smile.
Your paintings never had streets,
just buildings,
this seems significant,
in passing, like a snow day,
or postcards from strangers,
expressing generic goodwill.

Arterial burst
an urban monument -
sociologically speaking -
the broke-down psychology
an education in
theory
and practice,
never far removed
from the cold reality of pavement
and realizing
that everything you ever have
and ever will write
is just career advancement
and impersonal in its self-
centeredness.
Environmental break
and absolved of responsibility.
We never hurt anyone,
the ground did.

Virginia is for Lovers

You wake up
the bottle as a metaphor,
medicinal
and the mirror -
you lost your creative spark by age fifteen
and lived as performance art
(we all do.)
Lapsed Catholics and laid-off steelworkers -
your grandfather still says that
the Civil Rights Movement
is tantamount to communism -
this might as well be eastern Pennsylvania,
after dark, anyway.
In the winters we never see the sun
or feel warmth
and the summers are a temporary high,
chemical dissolution.
We exaggerate the lows.

Revisiting:
an introduction to our character
hospital-ambiance
all cameras and clocks.
I don't have the time
to figure you out
and I don't have the sight
to

You interrupt,
the interruptions are the
parts of life
where things happen.
I've learned to
enjoy the blank days
years perhaps
and this
cemetery pause
will not make me stronger
you taught me better than that
and I can't follow
and I don't want to get there first
I'm past the collection of memories
and exploration

Break
and across

Highway

A cast of characters
shadowed
ill-fitting garments
broke-down
in the middle of the road.
And I
as one who showed promise
could only think
of the symbolism
and not save
a goddamned
soul.