i need something more

i'm beginning to think that the things in my head don't have any music. i think that i will sit and wait until a stack of muddy clouds brings in rain from all sides. yes, it's so simple to wake up and smile and run out the door, calling out the names of all the people that i tuck away in my heart. it doesn't want to come out of me. someone let something slip inside my blood and now all i want to do is water the plants and hide off where i won't be able to hear myself anymore. then there's all of these places that wait and cry out for me but i can't wait for them to pull their hands out of their pockets to give me time. i am fallen.

keep me to yourself. keep me up tonight. keep me from climbing up to the place in my head where i wear a mask and sit neatly in the middle of a long, dirty stage and all of the thinning, sick and bleeding people lay at my feet and tell me to become their story. i have been sitting there for a long time now. please, keep me all to yourself.

it's fine

i find that i have covered too much of myself over. i find that i needed to sing when i was quiet and staring at the seagulls that walked around in the back yard. i just want to say i'm sorry. i just want to keep all the noise in my head to myself. someone should push me now, out in the open, out into the street where they hand me loneliness and paint my face. i used to drive into the walls and leave my conscience stranded on the dark stone stairs of the church. now i just fade like i'm supposed to. i just wake up like i'm supposed to. i won't throw any of me into those sharp waters. i'll just sit here, that's all. i'll just sit.

crossing the red afternoon

i woke up after all the dying had happened in my dream and i thought about leaving a note on the table telling them that i would be gone for a few days and not to worry. i couldn't do it though. i couldn't leave so i broke another part of myself open so that i could get through the day and i smiled so that no one would know how everything else inside and around me was over. everything just felt finished.

last night i stood in front of an empty church, on the altar and i saw my reflection in the black top of the piano that was off to the side and i unplugged all the lights so that i could pretend it was just like the grave except more open and full of soft black spaces. everyone else was downstairs where all the music was. i held my breath. somebody else must have been holding the rest of me together. somebody else must have delivered me from over the brown water back into my bed, somebody else is behind everything. somebody must have found me there in the middle of town, underneath the bell tower, underneath the sandy bottoms of their shoes and i stayed with them until they were able to shake me from their skin.

find me an altar. find me a skin to climb into. i'm moving now.

i'm here but i'm not sure why.

tasting traffic

i can't come down anymore. there are peaches on the table and there is no sunrise for hours. this could have been my last day. all the faces in my head bleed in and out of each other and they don't know how to get back home. they don't know how to get out of me. if i knew that i was this messed up i would have stopped myself from walking to that bedroom where the men and women dress each other like the figures on the canvas and they never find the time to trace the world over their own bodies. they only force their way over it so that it seems familiar and then they will not be afraid. it's the same for me. that's what i have done. my ghost is the only other person tonight next to me. the ghost is stronger than i remember but just as ugly as the last time.

we have hearts, yes we do and we just don't know where they will take us. we just don't know.

sounding like a cello

you said this isn't what you wanted so we walked into the theater and waited. i watched the people in the back row laughing. on the walls the paintings were scattered just so you always had to keep looking around. i saw everything had so little space to breathe. i am so dramatic some days. i am so dramatic most days.

i like to talk about the moon eclipsing and the paper hats that I made back when I was too small to reach the table without being lifted.

i am stuck inside of my own head and i don't know how i could feel before now when now seems like the only time to feel.

this is the way i will leave you

i came home. sick. all the lights were on. everyone was in bed.
tell me this isn't what it's like.
tell me that i'm lonely.
tell me something and stop listening to me.
you never understood me.
this is the struggle. this is the sick. this is the lonely.
this is where one person turns to another and says, "you've been gone for so long. why don't you go back home?"

i can't take my eyes

whatever it was that you said doesn't matter. i have already forgotten. it has come to be my turn to pull out my skeleton and watch it soak in the sunlight for a while, not for too long, so that i can be sure it will be strong for those who need it more than i do now.

they need me to drive with them. it is twelve hours away. it is far up on a hill in the graveyard. they need to take me there so that they can remember. i want to take them. they will tell me the way. they always tell me the way.

of course the sky cannot separate us from the ground, the trees, the lions, it cannot separate us at all. we are all just a crowd. it's the same way that we see the clouds. the sky sees us and pretends we're something entirely different. it is nice to think of all of us, our entire history, our family, all of us as being thought of as something completely different. we're just passing crowds to the sky. passing off into corners where our skin is dried and we have no sense, no senses. we have nothing.

still, i am off to drive with them, twelve hours, so that i will change. change is coming. this is the part of me that needs to be rougher and wrinkled. this is the part of me that needs.

i almost didn't come home tonight

i have a hard time with all of this. all of this quiet, all of this patience, all of this. these trees are black and pointed at me and i am hoping that i won't be able to run. i am hoping that i can stay here and take this like it is, all of the sharpness, all of the stinging, all of the sparkling. i want it all to fall out of my head and into a place where things are white and honest and real and that's where i'll be in the end, with an umbrella and handfuls of music that string along behind me as i move through roads, houses and blueness.

the closeness of the pink sky

i run my finger along the wall and i wish it was sharper. i wish the edges would cut me and then i would be done with it. i would move away, maybe to london and lay my records out on the floor and drink things and smoke things that would shake my head until i am out of everything, screaming across a hollow, foggy bridge in the city where the beggar that sleeps on the street pulls out a knife from his side and shows me how he opens his skin and how it's not blood but the blue ocean that comes out of him and covers over me, all of his bleeding covers over me and he says, "see it's a blue ocean inside of me, a gray, green and blue ocean inside of me."

i can get out of this place, i know it. i will go off to do my chores and pretend that i am fast and that soon i will be thin and ready to crawl into the spaces where the mothers and fathers used to walk hand in hand with their little children. the children knew they were only being brought here to be ruined. their new clothes all wrinkled and spoiled so that they can't wear them to school in the fall. i will crawl back there and rip through it all with the rusty nail that i had pulled from out of one of the walls in my house. then i will be ready, once everything has been torn, my head, heart, hands, once they are all torn, i can leave.

inside the ruined room

i could not hold my arms up any higher. i thought that i should wave but they were too far to have seen me, they were all too far. i wish some people wouldn't come here anymore, like the school children who sit with their mouths open watching the ceiling splinter into my skin and they just watch and listen. if i could feel less, i would start out into the street without my jacket and hope for the rain to sit next to me on the bench where it would tell me that all of my life has been wasted on standing in the frozen fields without purpose. i have stood here with everyone else, only they wanted me to speak louder and i said that i was moving to the sound of the stars as they sprinkled up against the old rooftops and they said that i was messed up and they threw me out into the song because they said "you must like pretty songs" and that's where they left me but i can't sing and i can't dance so all of this, everything is pointless. it makes sense, i make sense. but i don't belong. i don't fit into the yellow. you say it's looking dimmer and dimmer the further down we go. i think you’re onto something.

the roof just fell off

and i stumbled into my house with my white shirt dirty with the smells and the colors of a sadness i picked up somewhere in the road.

when i went to school it was so warm in the hallways and they beat me with their faster shoes and their hearts of linen lined up in the bleachers. i heard speakers from the back of the room talking about candy and all the things i should be doing with myself.

i felt alone when i was sitting in with the band and the drummers kept on drumming and the trombones laid down and all i heard was the sighs of the singers who waited for someone to come and tell them it was their time.

we used to climb up to the train tracks and read each other poetry and i told them all how lonely it could be when all the time i had was wasted on some poor little promises i made when i did not know that i would still be here to keep them. i thought i would break somebody's heart.

i thought there was nothing more to do after this. i thought i would be finished, fold my arms and then turn away.

i already know where this ends up

i stared off into the shiny head of the light bulb and i tried to remember when i last wore glitter around my eyes.

it has been so long since I last saw you. you like to wear shirts and rubber shoes. tonight you told me you were leaving. i said, "ok."

we make it sound like the world needs more flowers, more vines to climb, more songs, more poems. we get lost in the mess.

you watch me, just like i do. i watch your mouth stagger through the words.

you walked away and I sat alone in an empty movie theater. they showed a film and afterwards i zipped up my sweatshirt and i don’t know if i would ever see you again.

"so long," i said.

hands stretched across the road

i feel how we have burned in the sunlight and now we walk as easily as we can and it all seems so real and pure. in the back of the car i was cold and you told me not to feel anything, you told me to forget how to pretend. you went back to your city in the morning after i sat awake with you all night. you went back to your city and stood in the middle of it and screamed.

i wanted to move inside of you. i wanted to feel your arms bracing my back and i wanted you to breathe loudly and completely so that i knew you were whole. i wanted to know that you were whole.

you were the first

you came into my bed last night and you asked me to get dressed so that we could go walking.

"i can't, i'm too sick."

you still remember my name. you came into my bed. you moved far away back in a time where i knew things, back when i was able to read and sing. you moved far away and now you glow. you glow because of the closeness. you glow because the room is so warm and i have nothing to chase anyone away with. you glow because that's what i wanted. you glow and your face is covered in glitter. your body moves and leaves sparkles across the sheets, the blankets and we drown in it, the sparkles and the glow, we drown in it until we are left with only our voices.

i wanted you to know how sad i was but i didn't want to make you sorry so i said i was sorry and i said i was sad because i made myself sad because i didn't know what else to make of me because i made myself as thick as the distance that you made and i wanted to take it all back and then you told me i could still find faith but i was so afraid of it yes i was so afraid of god and of the men with spears who were out fishing in the river and i was scared of the men who could walk on water and scared of the men who fell because of the weight on their shoulders but you said that you found all of it. all of it.. you said i could have it. you wanted to give it to me.

"here, take it," you said.

i was too scared. i just wanted to stay awake. i just wanted you to crawl into my bed.

i just know that there are some things i will never be able to get over.

there is no now

i wish i was clean and wrapped inside of you somewhere. i would breathe when you breathe. tonight, i think of the war and how big the world is and i want to leave, just go driving until i stumble onto the answer. i won't keep you awake much longer, i promise.

if my heart hurts, i am sorry. i can find you and your long sleeves sitting at the edge of the bed, waiting for me to tell you i'm ready. at night you will change into a plain white tee shirt and i wonder what it would be like to chase you.

we are getting ready for tragedy, all of us. i don't know. these dreams aren't much to hold. these faces that i make up in hopes that they may appear outside of my head. i hear the guitars rattle. alone and in my kitchen. writing for no reason. i don't know what they mean when they tell me about pain. i will crawl out of here alive, i just know it.

please

leave me alone. you have left me far too many times. i dont understand why you still think you can find me. in the same place. waiting. with nothing to hold me up and keep my faith.

i want to take two weeks and go off to vermont and study the birds there. it is too early for dragonflies but maybe they'll be awakening from their maple covered sleep, sticky and unwinding so that we can see their shadows against the tops of the houses.

maybe there is some other time to find out about ourselves, maybe in years when our feet start to tire of all the walking and the roads want nothing to do with us. that's when we can cut open the trunk of a tree and see how we fit into the circle.

how sad i must be.

my heart is out.

if i was a blackbird

Tonight you handed yourself over to me, wrapped in ribbon and I wanted to slip out the window and fall with you into the full night where we could run barefoot through the town and never have to hear our voices get weaker, they get weaker as the hours move on.

I never was the smart one. I never knew how to hold myself up. You knew that all along, you say you've known all along how far the life line will take you and I can't say that life is learning, I am learning so little as the hours move on.

In the schools and in the backyards I think about it. I think about how we are standing in that purple field and we watch each other go further off to where the footprints are all scattered and the passages are covered in the rain from one thousand years ago and we turn our heads and we never know what we are seeing so we close our mouths and carry on, we close our mouths and carry on.

waiting

you said you won't spend the rest of your life alone. everyone crowds around you. "open up your presents," we used to say. you just closed your eyes and we don't know where you go, we don't know.

i don't know the shape of day. sometimes it sits easy on the windowsill and sometimes it's as big as the whole room, empty and still.

you used to always dress in white and we walked through the woods to the store. i remember i couldn't always fit on your shoulders so i got used to walking after a while. "when are we going to go there," i used to say. you just closed your eyes and i don't know where you go, i don't know.

oh, when we are older you will fall and break your arm and i will drive you home if i have to, i will drive you home because i want to.

like crawling

tell me i don't have to feel anymore and then i'll let go of your arm. i like the sound of your fingers scraping across the bricks of the buildings that we walk by. i wish it was just us at a table and you will wear a mask and i will not turn until you tell me to.

the day that i walked out of the house alone with all i needed in a white paper bag, i knew i was getting too heavy. i knew that i was pulling too hard and thinking too much about all of the colors i saw on the scarf that used to hang over the door knob. it was all wrong.

now we stand in a bookstore and i read about people with broken hearts that jump from off of the roof of their grandmother's house and they can't ever be fixed. i like to read their stories.

this is not my story, i tell you, this is not mine at all.

message x of x

To all the ships at sea...
...and all the ports of call.

To my family...
...and to all friends and strangers.

This is a message and a prayer.

The message is that my travels taught me a great truth.

l already had what everyone is searching for...
...and few ever find:

The one person in the world...
... who l was born to love forever.

A person like me, of the Outer Banks...
...and the blue Atlantic mystery.

A person rich in simple treasures...
...self-made, self-taught.

A harbor where l am forever home.

And no wind or trouble...
...or even a little death can knock down this house.

The prayer is that everyone in the world can know this kind of love...
...and be healed by it.

lf my prayer is heard, then there will be an erasing of all guilt...
...and all regret...
...and an end to all anger.

Please, God.

Amen.

"Message in a Bottle", by Nicholas Sparks

message 2 of x

''Dear Catherine. ''

There isn't an hour without you in it.
I mend the boats, test them. . .
. . .and aII the whiIe the memories come in Iike the tide.

I thought today of when we were young. . .
. . .and you Ieft our worId for a bigger worId.

I was a Iot more scared than I wouId admit.

I fought my fear. . .
. . .by teIIing myseIf you'd come back someday. . .
. . .and trying to think of the first thing I'd say when I saw you again.

I must have tried out possibiIities.

What did I finaIIy say?

Not much.

My mouth wouIdn't work, except to kiss you.

When you said, 'I'm here to stay' . . .
. . .that said it aII.

WeII, I'm doing it again.

I keep imagining what I'd say to you if somehow you came back. ''

"Message in a Bottle", by Nicholas Sparks

message 1 of x

''Dear Catherine:

l'm sorry l haven 't talked to you in so long.
l feel l've been lost...
...no bearings, no compass.

l kept crashing into things, a little crazy, l guess.
l've never been lost before.

You were my true north.
l could always steer for home when you were my home.

Forgive me for being so angry when you left.
l still think some mistake's been made...
...and l'm waiting for God to take it back.

But l'm doing better now.
The work helps me.
Most of all, you help me.

You came into my dream last night with that smile...
... that always held me like a lover...
...rocked me like a child.

All l remember from the dream...
...is a feeling of peace.
l woke up with that feeling...
...and tried to keep it alive as long as l could.

l'm writing to tell you that l'm on a journey toward that peace.
And to tell you l'm sorry about so many things.

l'm sorry l didn 't take better care of you...
...so you never spent a minute being cold or scared or sick. ''
''I'm sorry I didn't try harder to find the words. . .
. . .to teII you what I was feeIing.
I'm sorry I never fixed the screen door.
I fixed it now.
I'm sorry I ever fought with you.
I'm sorry I didn't apoIogize more.
I was too proud.
I'm sorry I didn't bring you more compIiments. . .
. . .on everything you wore and every way you fixed your hair.
I'm sorry I didn't hoId on to you with so much strength. . .
. . .that even God couIdn't puII you away. ''

Signed, ''AII my Iove, G. ''

"Message in a Bottle", by Nicholas Sparks

the love letter

Dear Goat,

How does one fall in love? Does one trip? Do you stumble, lose your balance and drop to the sidewalk, graze your knee, graze your heart? Do you crash to the stony ground? Is there a precipice, from which you float, over the edge, forever?

I know I'm in love when I see you, I know when I long to see you. Not a muscle has moved. Leaves hang unruffled by any breeze. The air is still. I have fallen in love without taking a step. When did this happen? I haven't even blinked.

I'm on fire. Is that too banal for you? It's not, you know. You'll see. It's what happens. It's what matters. I'm on fire.

I no longer eat, I forget to eat. Food looks silly to me, irrelevant. If I even notice it. But I notice nothing. My thoughts are full and raging, a house full of brothers, related by blood, feuding blood feuds:

"I'm in love."
"Typically stupid choice."
"I am, though, I'm racked by love as if love were pain."
"Go ahead. Fuck up your life. It's all wrong and you know it. Wake up. Face it."
"There's only one face, it's all I see, awake or asleep."

I threw the book out the window last night. I tried to forget. You are all wrong for me, I know it, but I no longer care for my thoughts unless they're thoughts of you. When I'm close to you, in your presence, I feel your hair brush my cheek when it does not. I look away from you, sometimes. Then I look back.

When I tie my shoes, when I peel an orange, when I drive my car, when I lie down each night without you, I remain,

As ever,
Ram"

"The Love Letter", by Cathleen Schine

hide me

you can be so small. small enough to know that hands can be too much for you to hold. don't tell me where you're going. i imagine you are breaking windows somewhere. you are throwing yourself into them and how is it that you can cut yourself and keep laughing?

it looks like i'm afraid and there is no room in the back of your car so i will just do nothing while the smoke that comes out of the sky dances all over me.

such a shame

do you see the circles around my eyes? i wasn't running too long but the road was alive and the cold air made it angry and i was swallowed but the gravel set me free when the time seemed right.

i wish you would tie me up outside your door and i will beat on the floor until my knuckles are scraped and bleeding. don't you remember when we walked along the sidewalks? you were covered in winter then. now i suppose you are cluttered in the middle of an apartment. every once in a while you reach down into your pocket but you don't know why. you see the clocks all around you. they steer you around from place to place until you are drastic and empty and you know you aren't home. you know you shouldn't be where you are. those are the ghosts that blow softly on your skin as you go off sleeping.

the notebook

"I am nothing special, of this I am sure. I am a common man with common thoughts and I've led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten, but I've loved another with all my heart and soul, and to me, this has always been enough."

- Nicholas Sparks, "The Notebook"

desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and haste.
And remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible, without surrender,
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly, and listen to others,
even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs;
for the world is full of trickery.
But let not this blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals
and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for on the face of all aridity and disenchantment
it is as perennial as the grass,
Take kindly to counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit
to shield you in sudden misfortune,
But do not distress yourself with imaginings,
many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees or stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore, be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive him to be,
And whatever your labours and aspirations
in the noisy confusion of life,
keep peace with your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams
It is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful, strive to be happy.

with your ghost

i like to think of you as the ghost that walked along the sidewalks downtown without anyone else. i watch your shadow as if it were like the wings of an airplane cast out across my backyard.

you used to tell me that i belonged on the railroad. we would sit on the tracks that wrapped around the bottom of the afternoon sky. i wanted to tie the stones around your neck and watch you dance with the rust flying in your face like glitter.

you never went back home.

i hope you aren't cold. i hope all the blue sinks down inside of you and that you run your fingers and scratch along the skin of love.

for the time when i forgot

when you go it will be sparrows all around you. the house will smell like summer as you fall down and into the train where you will be next to the girl with glitter on her face.

you won't know how to talk but you will remember what it feels to have poetry. you will still have the dust from your youth. maybe the rust on your guitar case latches will be gone.

everything is timing. now there's a pain in your arm and something is wrong in your stomach all at once. you can't stay dizzy all the time, can you? maybe you're just too sad to know where you were when you were walking up and down those small brown streets and your dreams lie inside the pigeon beaks that you would feed when you were trying.

what is real?

VELVETEEN RABBIT
by Margery Williams

(this starts at the point when the Skin Horse and the Rabbit are talking)

The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

"I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.

"The Boy's Uncle made me Real," he said. "That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always."

The Rabbit sighed. He thought it would be a long time before this magic called Real happened to him. He longed to become Real, to know what it felt like; and yet the idea of growing shabby and losing his eyes and whiskers was rather sad. He wished that he could become it without these uncomfortable things happening to him.

never goodbye

airport goodbye scenes are never my favorite. each farewell gets harder and harder to bear so let's make a deal. i won't say goodbye, instead i'll say "later" because i don't want to give this a sound of finality in it. i refuse to be defeated this way. we will see each other again, if not in this life, then in heaven. if i don't say goodbye to you now, i will allow myself the luxury of thinking of you and not feeling guilty about it. that's how i want it anyway. if we never get the chance to speak to each other again face to face, remember that my thoughts have never wandered far from you. almost everything i see or hear or taste brings me back to you.

there was a time when i thought closure was what i needed in order to move on, whatever moving on entailed. i have come to realize that closure is just an illusion, and so is distance. the bonds we share bridges the distance between us, whether it is time, space, or dimension. "my memories of you and how you have completed my existence will never fade from me. i will never need to say goodbye to you."

only hellos and laters.

so, hello.