things to do.

1. Visit Roden Crater.
2. Backpack Europe.
3. Learn how to fly fish in Montana.
3A. Learn how to gut a fish, and cook it.
4. Publish an entire book of poetry.
5. Tango in Buenos Aires.
6. Paint everything.
7. Plant a tree. Fuck, plant a garden, and watch it grow.
8. Finish my Bachelor’s and Post Grad studies.
8A. study abroad.
9. Take an entire summer and road trip it across America, and live in my car, and take black and white pictures of everything.
10. Run a marathon.
11. Go on an African Safari.
12. Learn to cook.
13. Get stoned with Shooter Jennings.
14. Learn to speak another language fluently.
15. Travel: there- Australia, Thailand, Ireland, Peru, Chile, Egypt, here- Charleston, Livingston, Nashville, Galveston, the Keys, Boulder, everywhere…
16. Quit biting my nails.
17. Learn to play the guitar, and my banjo
18. Carnival in Rio.
19. Listen to jazz in New Orleans.
20. Graceland.
21. Hike the Smokies.
to be continued….

Sometimes it takes this:

to remind me that “death steals everything but our stories”. And maybe that face has been weathered, and worn and has cracks like the mountains that it entertains, and that entertain it, but at least they are as deep as the life that he lived. i could only hope for the same.

to whom it may concern:

I should be worried about you right now. I should be thinking about the facts at hand…the distance, the pressure, the pace, the possiblities, the lies and the unadulterated truth. my mind should be racing between calling you, or texting you, or waiting… a day, or two, or twelve. I should be consumed by you…

but I’m not.

all I can think about is the smell of the air blowing through my office window. and vanilla frozen custard dipped in toasted coconut from the freeze. and the beach. and bleachers at wrigley. and how hot vegas is in 105 degree weather. and fall-off-the-bone ribs. and the way the red white and blue fireworks reflect on to lake michigan on the 4th of july. and how beautiful the open road looks under a glaring sun, just glimmering with sights and scenes of americana unknown, yet somehow still foreign and exotic. and fairs with cotton candy and ferris wheels. and cold, cold beer on a boat cruising through the chain. and my birthday.

I truly think that people who live in year-round warm climates cannot possibly understand the feeling that is summer. because it is a feeling, and not just a season. it is nostalgia. it is aphrodesia. it is a three month long, hot, torrid, passionate fling with life. and I love it more than just about anything.

lately on several occasions I’ve recalled those nights I used to spend at the barn. the tailgates down, the bonfires, the strawberry wine, and skinny dipping, and what it meant to be 17 and completely carefree, and have the entire world at my fingertips. to be wanted in ways that I didn’t even understand, and to want nothing. I think it’s time to get back to that. it’s time to get back to that summer.

That summer, I wrote this:

we spoke like two loves of long ago
but with a certain bitterness emanating and diffusing,
from and between the two of us.
amidst the calculated content of our conversation
all that I can recall

are the two a.m. escapades,
so young, throwing beer cans at trains,
crushing quarters smooth on the steel tracks,
and running back to your house breathlessly
with the ghostly whistles ringing in our ears
growing more faint and haunt in the distance.

the sticky summer air
that made our clothes cling
sweetly to our bodies
moist with sweat.
the tops of trees aflame,
sacrifices in our worship to the pregnant august sun.
your index finger wandering slowly along my lower back,
arching in efforts to escape.

the night the eight of us
removed our clothes, and our skin,
bare to each other, and the world, and the freeway,
and everyone else disappeared for some moments
and we made love to each other in our minds.
we swam by starlight, and streetlight,
and savored all the simplicity of shadow
and sunrise, and knew
we were losing ourselves.

Do I dare ask if our thoughts are still connected?

just keep telling yourself…

so here it is.  here I am.  still here.  still in the same town, for 23 years. still in the same mindset.  finally with a chance to change it all.  but really, the chance has been here all along, I have nothing keeping me here anymore, except myself.  I’m just finally opening myself to it.  opening myself to the idea of figuring out who I really am, or at least figuring out the parts I don’t already know.  

because really, how do you find yourself in the same place you’ve always been? the same.  but i’m not happy with it.  well, maybe that’s not the right word.  maybe it is.  maybe it depends on the day.  I’m not satisfied. I want more.  I want to know who I am in a different place, where all of the people and places that made me who I am for the last 23 years are gone.  I want to know who I am underneath them all, without them all…just me. only me.  I want to know about what I’m made of.

but I am so scared.  of so many things.  loneliness.failure.silence.disappointedexpectations.life….really that’s it. I’m scared of the life I want to live. or maybe scared that the life I want to live doesn’t exist. or scared that I will go to the wrong place to find it.

one day it’s the west coast, and I’m california dreaming.  the next day it’s the desert, and in my mind I am rolling down a highway in the middle of nowhere the hot sun blaring.  the next day I’m listening to some George Jones and tennessee sounds like a plan.  but, really, it is just anywhere but here.

so I just keep telling myself that my days here are numbered. to exactly 187. because the more I tell myself that, the more it seems like less of a choice and more of an obligation.  the more I tell myself that the more I believe it.  On that note…

Taken

There is nothing left in this

street except shadow cast,

still lingering,

and a cigarette burned out,

still smoldering

and one breath of discontent.

 

That, somehow I miss some changes in time,

a time before mine,

and a place I’ve never known

but have longed for in the pre-dawn

haze that surrounds

and clouds my vision, reminiscing.

 

I want to be taken.

 

Taken with force and pain,

if necessary,

to tenement buildings in history books,

and oyster shell restaurants flanked by waves,

and waves of mountains,

in foreign lands in dreams

of sleepless nights

with subtitles, terrified

but laughing,

to the mattresses of flea infested motels

of ten cent towns,

mystic and misty back alleys

of blues bars in the country

of promise and prostitutes,

where reckless longing

for midnight hours at midday meet

restless lust for lives and places that I hope for

and imagine exist,

and the most perfect song I can imagine

and have heard skipping in my mind

like an old record.

To this, I raise my bottle and my stakes.

 

I run ahead to catch up with you

and walk alongside you,

still out of breath,

and here we are, ages apart

on that nameless street

with your nameless face

and my full, full heart.