Back Home

Here we are back in the Northwest, where

Everyone’s too upbeat about the future and

So assured that it’s all gonna change.

Here in the Northwest, our consciousness like

The Pacific, crashing and swelling and cold

And never too far from the rocky shoreline.

Here we are back in the Northwest, with

The only predictable weather and the

Forecaster has it quite easy from winter to June.

Here in the Northwest, our hearts tied by

Computer wires, our minds by ideas and

Tall metal bridges grid-lined in the sky.

Here we are back in the Northwest, where

Sometimes I miss the deep South, a world

Where life is clear-cut and restrictive and safe.

Back in the deep South, the mentality’s old and

Well-tested, the art’s so alive and lives uncontested

And the store has 43 types of thin-sliced white bread.

Here we are back in the Northwest, where

Everything’s so young and recently destroyed,

And nothing lasts longer than a music movement.

Here in the Northwest, the clouds hanging like

Coffee smells in the morning, the days lagging

Like an empty Nirvana song.

XX---

People Change.

I can’t state what you say cuz I don’t know.

The only reason that you’ve given is that shrug and small denial,

That enigmatic smile,

That apologetic way in which you slowly lose your voice.

I can’t argue if you never argue back.

I can’t reason with your mindset since you only state the facts,

If your single contribution is the lack of our locution,

And that loyalty of yours that I can only barely track.

And I worry that… you’ll never be the same.

You know that this decision’s not the game you play with colored guns

It’s a reality that’s harsher than your glaring desert sun

And it will change the man you thought you’d be

And this life that you’ve begun

And she’s right, you know, that this will make you straight –

And take if from me, straight’s not something you want to be

And I prefer you bent, we… both do.

You want respect, you’ll get incomprehension

You’ll get fear and quiet guilt and

Be ignore and acknowledged like you’re shifting dimensions,

And I, I am afraid that you won’t be the same.

People grow. People change.

But I want – at the very least –

I want your smile to remain.

XX---

The Downside to Consorting with the Gods

Woulda done, shoulda done

Lizabeth had a son

Hair being chalky white,

Eyes being black.

Asked ‘bout the color she

Said with a blubber the

Father was Charon who

Pigment did lack.


X----

He Asks No More

He said I don’t feel my heartbeat anymore.

He said I used to have a rhythm, like a knocking at my door,

I used to feel like somebody who’d never lived before,

I used to feel my body track the beating at my core

He said I don’t feel my heartbeat anymore.

He said I’m not pulled to wander anymore.

He said I used to speed on highways just to hear the engine roar,

I used to let the windows down and wish that I could soar,

I used to drive through rainstorms just to watch the water pour

He said I’m not pulled to wander anymore.

He said I don’t dream of flying anymore.

He said I used to stretch my wings and glide over the sea and shore,

I used to swim among the coral on the ocean floor,

I used to dream a world with a thousand open doors,

He said I don’t dream of flying anymore.

He said I used to feel like living. But no more.


XXX--

I Don't Miss You

Poem will not be published due to ridiculously impossible-to-publish nature of poem.
And that's all I'm going to say about THAT.

the 110th floor

I stopped understanding war when it wasn’t about the bad guys and the good guys anymore.

I stopped understanding war years ago, when parents society-sophisticated tried to explain the smoke

And the one thousand back-flipping papers in the sky

And the dust storm running down New York streets:

Firefighters caught up, women in business skirts running and

The planes came from two different directions but

Somehow there were four of them?

I didn’t understand. I didn’t try very hard.

I stopped understanding war when I realized it wasn’t just this once.

When I realized that a war didn’t have a time period, only amplifications

That the towers in New York were really the towers in Khobar and

People screamed the same in Vietnam tunnels as Iwo Jima foxholes and

Your hands shook the same on the video camera in

Tiananmen square and the streets of Syria,

Which were really the streets of Nuremberg, the glass

Sparkling on the pavement like lost stars and

I didn’t understand. I tried to sort these wars into “just” and “un” but I failed.

I stopped understanding war long before I realized the internet understood it all.

Long before I knew that Wikipedia’s blued links could lead me from page to page and

I could spend all night reading about one “operation” after another, searching for

Something headed “The Answer” or “History’s Judgment” or “A Real Reason We Decided To Invade”

Long before I apple-tabbed al Jazeera every hour to check on six separate states of Spring and

Watched hours and hours of footage too raw to be distant in which the

Same floors buckled under the strain of fire to collapse one after another after another and

I had to turn off the sound.

I didn’t understand. I didn’t have the processing power of my little-screened laptop.

I stopped understanding war even after the explosion of its supposed solutions.

The man hiding in his supporter’s dirt floor, his picture on the front page, he didn’t look

Evil, he looked pitiable – he looked helpless – he looked afraid and

The white UN drones, their target compounds didn’t just hold dictators they held a family and

When desert-camouflaged troops crossed over that line for the (gods I hope) last time

It wasn’t a victory it was a breath finally let go and

It was the excuse we needed to forget four and a half thousand left behind and

One set of blood-stained pictures dropped into the ocean after them and still

I don’t understand. I’ve discovered the end of a code-name isn’t the end of a war, only an era.

I’ve stopped understanding war and, honestly, I hardly try anymore. But goddammit I remember.

I can’t tell you if tanks in Kuwait were reasonable, or Cold War funding for Afghan rebels,

And I can’t tell you what it feels like to be hit with a water canon or lead bullets or the loss of a father

But I remember that someone does. I don’t forget that someone stood in a Palestinian camp and lived and

Someone stood on the 110^th floor and didn’t, and I don’t forget that

Someone is responsible. That sometimes that person is the UN’s most wanted

And sometimes he is the decorated war general and the foreign affairs official but I don’t forget that

Sometimes that person is me and even though I –

I don’t always understand, I remember that the violence doesn’t leave when it passes over my head

It isn’t gone when it leaves the television screen and the laptop screen and the public scene, even if it

Is sometimes impossible to understand, it is War and

It remains.


XXXXX

quindesce

One of my favorite things to write during NaPoWriMo, today's (third) poem is actually a pwoermd - a one-word poem.
This one is created with the words "quintessence" and "evanesce" as its roots, but with a meaning slightly different from either.
Some other pwoermds I created tonight (they're lots of fun) that weren't chosen in the final cut are included below.


ineffvanesable

windter

sexpectant

evangeliscence


XXX--

Letter-Stall

I met her –

Slate-hair, slim-breath, lost-halo her –

As a last-seat rambler.

She heart-stole me.

She is a rebel, her –

Rose-heart, storm-blest, star-tooth her –

Tall tales stole me.

She rises; she –

Loose-limb, lazy-hair, heart-rest she –

Is more lost,

Here is mere me, sole, me.

I’ll miss her –

Mast-raise, sail-raise, heart-raise her –

‘Till she sails home to this shore,

To me, lost at this shoal; me.

She is small, her –

Maze-lost, mail-heart, sheer-tore her –

Bless is a loss, a hole, to me.

To me, home is her –

Tame-bear, time-raze, to-amaze, lite-beam, sole-heart her –

Am I lost? At a loss? Is this role me?

Oh I, I blame her.

I swear I haven't totally lost my mind with this poem - it's called a "Beautiful Inlaw", and it's a form where the only letters you're allowed to use are those of a name. I used the full name of a good friend of mine; this poem is about her.

X----

Reasons

It was

Eighty degrees and

Sunny today,

I

Stayed inside

Due to a

Compilation of

Factors, including

The humidity

And ticks

And wi-fi connections –

I

Opened the window

To find

The wind was

Blowing pleasantly;

I

Stayed inside

Due to some

Complex considerations,

Including

My grandfather

The dog

And

Neighbors –

My

Lined paper

Remained

Blank in

The second half of

Everything,

From

Lunch on it sat

Waiting

And empty

With the pencil sitting

Right by,

It

Didn’t do anything

Because I

Didn’t go out,

Due to

A lot of stuff

I

Had

Going on, including

History homework

MacBook keys

And a couch –

The air was

Heavy with

Thunderstorm

Weather, and

The clouds were

Building

Up

In that

Thick

Sky I

Love

But I didn’t

Go outside

Because of

Some multi-faceted

Reasons

You might not understand,

Including

Apathy

The suspension of time

And ticks.

XX---

COUNT

Fibonacci

Numbers

Always seemed

So damn perfect.

They are so starkly irregular,

So dependably irrational in their quest for infinity.

If phi is my favorite number, if a spiral is my favorite shape,

Is it possible that my thoughts are spelled out in long and complex, curving sequences of one, one, two, three, five?

Is it possible that my path in life will be a line twisting at one hundred and thirty-seven point five degrees, brushing the golden edges of ever widening rectangles as they expand into space?

Or is my obsession with patterns only the symptom of a mind too number based to accept the unpredictability of reality?

Should I stop counting clouds because I know they’ll never form cohesive sequences?

Maybe life’s meant to be qualified, not quantified.

Still, my head wonders: Is

The world logarithmic,

Or is

It

Binary?

XXX--