A Slam Poem for Those Who Live Quietly

Here's another of the poems which came out of the portfolio. I'm going to try and get this one recorded - it's a very visceral poem.

Life

When grief and loneliness
pile up inside, creeping vile,
from the pit of churning insecurity
to spill out your mouth and eyes - smother heart –
life is the brilliant thing which will show up to ravage you -
make you whole. It comes
as poetry of time and place,
found in passionate voice
that sets a room on fire,
or leaves it quaking
in sudden silence.

Life is what we see in the slanting shade
of every memory we’ve made –
all that we’ve seen, replayed
in perfect glinting moments,
tiny and shifting and
full of a strength won in blood. Layering
muscle onto frame,
never ask for less of a burden,
only wider shoulders.
We beat the steel of our hearts new,
pounding and pounding in flame,
re-forging with every loss.

When life cracks you one across the jaw,
it is only to remind you that men
don’t go down easy.
That anyone can be strong on a good day.
I save my strength for the days
when the only thing you can do
is to stand back up and stare life down,
to yell through clenched teeth
and blood sweat,
“You god-damned son of a bitch!”

Life is determined to keep breaking me down
to the fiery knot inside my gut that pulses
and reminds me why I choose to live life
honestly. To love,
and never be ashamed.

Life is a rainstorm through clenched teeth –
We drink down what we can keep.

95

So here's a poem that got posted earlier, but which has been completely re-worked. This is another of the poems which came out of this semester's poetry class. Fairly sums up how I feel about Connecticut most days.
So, 95:

I.
These days, I’m too familiar with the blazing track of
a summer sun on my face,
setting over this asphalt welcome-mat --
Interstate Ninety-Five, roaring north.
This state makes my blood roil.
The setting orange light
flares between the lost trees
and dark forests. The grey lanes
fly to the horizon, and all I can think
is how close I am to losing myself again.
Kept inside this rotted tree,
I am sick of scrabbling for cracked open acorns -
fallen crabapples.
Driving as fast as I can,
all of the pretty Connecticut girls are going north,
wrapped in sunglasses,
passing me by.

II.

Ninety Five, into the harsh spawning sun
glaring on westernmost Connecticut,
Ninety Five down the dagger bright strips of asphalt
crossing through the strange no-man’s land
of almost ordered forests -
The four miles where nature seems to hold her breath
and huge dawn arcs above -
Ninety Five quivering on the speedometer as I’m banging
sleep-numbed fingers against the steering wheel,
grimacing my way through a song,
Ninety Five down Ninety Five, ripping across a road that’s never meant
anything to anyone.

III.

These days, writing myself dry in the dark mornings,
I am finding my way clear of
the stench of déjà vu.
Breathing heavily to empty lungs,
All of the air I’m holding
spins out to stop and slow,
harden into concrete.
These days, lifting and carrying,
straining with all I have,
I’m building up again.
Finished with living in the rubble of a home.
Finished picking through debris and
calling it justified.
Kept between and around each slow beam of sunlight,

I am running south.

Another Dream

So it's been a while since anything got posted here. I'm finished with the first semester of sophomore year, and I'm happy with how it went. I wasn't as productive with poetry as I'd hoped to be - the class I took let me down significantly in that regard. Over the next couple of days, I'm going to post what I developed, and hopefully get some new things churning.
So, here's a poem.

A Retelling

Walk in circles long enough,
and you’ll always find yourself in the center.
My feet trace the path of my thoughts,
winding the sidewalks of my city.
Under the bright lights spawning
the mad drunk energy of Saturday,
out through the deep calm and hidden tunnels
of patient Tuesday night Charleston streets.

I wait in my quiet way for
a breeze off the river,
some serene thing to lift me up.
The night holds its breath
until I find myself
leaning against a dark rail on the dark edge of Charleston,
watching a ponderous behemoth silhouette itself
from across the bay. White light shines
through the cracks in stacked shipping containers.
The wind is blocked. All I hear is my own
quiet breath, in time and tune with the waves. It leaves me tired,
exhausted – I find a song
on suddenly numb lips.
It is enough to carry me home.

An October Dream

An October Dream

I.
My chest hurts this morning –
it is a Saturday and it is cold and
I’m alone. I walk down the thirteen
steps to the street, hands fisted inside my jacket.
The last farmer’s market huddles on
the edge of Marion Square.
Bright tents hang stark against the grey October sky.
I smile at the man who hands me my coffee.
My chest hurts this morning, a tiny ball of fire in
my sternum, grinding a way out. I clutch my coffee
through quiet, waiting King street, watching my hands.
Breath catches on every exhale – it is just cold enough to see.
Down Market street, the edges of people’s souls
trail out of theirs mouths.

II.
She puts her hair down,
the edges shining in the sunlight behind her.
Here in the middle of this war, she is beautiful.
The world is dying everywhere,
and all that matters is the way she breathes.
Gives herself to the wind blowing
her hair in through the last of this day,
falling over my face.

III.
It is Monday, and warm.
I sit on the edge of Charleston and two
gleaming jet fighters roar in over the river,
running their patrols with missiles and bombs and
pointed noses full of .50 caliber ammunition.
They’re so close I can see the men inside.

IV.
Her blue eyes fill mine. My chest hurts again.
She says,
“The room we’re in is burning down,
and we’re just standing
staring at each other.”
All I can feel is the kernel of furious flame in my chest,
Hollowing me.


V.
It’s Thursday, and cold again, and I’m alone,
pen in hand. The clock above my desk
is stopped at 1:35 and two seconds
and I have no idea when it
is.

Down the Street

Down the Street

between the moon hanging in its gleaming track
and a pool of spotlight,
a girl in a black dress is dancing.

She weaves her arms and her hair whips -
blazing tracks to caress shoulders.
and it is all I can do not to fall in love with
the siren song of her skirt flashing against her legs.

Underneath the bright lights,
I lose my haze and drop confusion
in my wake. Down the street,
There is a girl in a black dress dancing a love song.

She steps out of the light for the space of
a heartbeat
smiles

Down the street there are green eyes smiling through
a breaking wave of thick hair.

She spins, her feet leaving the ground,
and she’s falling outside of the light –
Down the street, in a rush of salt air and igniting humidity,
I’m catching hold of a
hurricane in a black dress.

City in a Birdcage

Finally pulled this one out. Been wrestling with it for a couple of weeks, easy - took some inspiration from one of my friends to make it really happen.



City in A Birdcage

Fading August evening light
slips its way over us,
dancing on the rails of the edge of Charleston,
sunset on a city in a birdcage.

Summer flies away over the edge of the canyon –
orange light slipping through trees coated sepia,
blazing onto my face with all
of the soft caress of redemption. Orange light
bringing strength to stand –
strength to hold in and weather the
screaming gales of September.

Summer ending on a smile
and a wave as the traveling circus
folds its tents, collapsing smiles
and a lullaby into the echoing
keys of a piano.

Dancing on that rail,
in the slanting sunlight through the
metal lining of this
birdcage,
I am grinning for all of the reasons not to.

In one moment, the last summer sunset ends,
leaving us spinning on the slate tiles of that sea wall.

We’re all lions these days,
roaring ourselves out to the river at midnight,
underneath the strange low moon and
between all of the man-made havens of streetlights,
shouting our freedom in the
silence of Wednesday night Charleston.

And later, walking home,
north up Meeting Street,
all of the frogs in the bushes are howling.

Something That's Not a Poem

So it's a rainy Charleston day. The power to my apartment is off until either later tonight, or tomorrow morning. I barely slept last night and got up early, so I'm tired. As a result - I'm sitting in the Kudu coffeeshop, using their internet. It's good times.

Last night was a very interesting one - I uncovered and analyzed a few layers of this strange belief structure I have. I also was introduced to a new side of one of my friends. All in all, an intriguing night.

One of the things she and I spent a lot of time last night talking about was "purpose". Between coffin nails and drags on cigars, we hashed out a lot of interesting topics.

And for the first time, I was able to express coherently a belief I've always held; that because of the fact that humans are intelligent, self-aware creatures, with individual personalities, we each have a reason for our lives - a "purpose".
I don't believe that this "purpose" is a result of any creator's plans - I am an atheist and I stand unmoving on that issue. However, because all humanity shares a collective destiny - a result not of a god, but of the introduction of our civilizations coupled to our basic biology - each of our lives has a reason for being.

At this point in time, I am starting to believe that this reason for being is not a specific thing. It's as if each of our lives is the vague beginnings of a song. Subconsciously, we're all aware of what key the song is in - we know the time signature. We're tapping out the rhythm with our hearts. This song - our individual "purpose" - is something unique to every person. It's based on our personality and worldview - both the one we're brought up in, and the one we see.

We know the general direction of our purpose, and the point of our lives is to develop that. We're here to write the entirety of our song - to sing the melodies clear and bright.

But it can be so hard.

This is why I believe that people can be corrupt and can act harshly. This is why I believe cruelty exists - harmful people are people who have lost their sense of purpose. They are people who are either deliberately or unconsciously ignoring their instincts, and are acting to further their own ambition, to gain power simply for themselves.

Right now, I believe that my purpose is to attempt to express the world as I see it. I'm here, and I have this gift with language, in order to take in what I see around me and present it to other people. I'm here to strike a chord that makes others hum along.

Lifting Away

Spent some time the other night doing some free writing. I had a huge creative jumpstart in the form of an open mic, and this is one of the things that popped out. Enjoy, criticize, do what you will.

A Happy One

Love is what ties us together,
what comes above the hate and the jealousy,
to tie into the music and simple creative soul,
find ourselves and create ourselves –
allows us to love ourselves:
Our self

Man is the animal who laughs, and
laughter is for the soul –
music that reaches inside of you and finds the places in
your heart where it can resonate;
a creative mind can think with a pen,
along the strings of a guitar and sliding over the keys of a piano –
a creative mind spins the world with love and with
understanding,
to hit the right notes that will tell the story of the world and of human life.

It’s a man standing on stage,
it’s a man with a guitar,
it’s a man spitting verse and ink into words
through a microphone,
it’s every human being
who stood up and played just because they might as well have died without.
It’s the actress who truly finds herself on stage,
shining flame flashing through the steps of
a scene with all of the skill of a dancer
and with more passion in her heart than she could ever contain.

It’s the clarity of thought of a summer afternoon
in the sun and the simple contented fuzziness of mind
when waking to a cold winter morning
in the arms of the one who loves you.

So take it, and embrace it,
and find comfort in the simple acts,
as we spin our great web of human creativity
to find what we can create
with love in our hearts.

Jacques

This one's a poem that I wrote during one of my workshops earlier this year. We had to write a piece about a room that meant a great deal to ourselves. This is what turned out.

Jacques

We’re alike, this room and I –
both of us wanting,
waiting for the slender, quiet figure
to step back in, to fill
and sit smiling,
to be the one who fits naturally here.

We’re both waiting for him to come back,
To smoothly turn on the
gleaming corner lamps, forcing out
the shadows of lost summers.

He’ll drape himself on
this carpet –
jeans stark against the sea of woven brown –
breathe in the musk of
the room’s anticipation and replace it with
his clean air.

And then lean over me, strong fingers
gently handling my plastic model airplane,
tracing its curves and corners with thin, rough fingers,
applying the same considering caress he’ll give to
the blossoms sparkling outside the front door –

This room is waiting for the gardener to
return and cultivate, but
for now it’ll have to make do with me,
skinny boy with orange shorts
playing in the weeds

Self Affirmation for the Uninformed

This is what I believe.

White Dwarf

We’re told

Our self is something beautiful,

filled with the pure creative fire that explodes in an

artist’s eyes,

across a canvas,

across the sky.

We’re told

Our self is meaningless.

Our self is garbage.

Our self is the perfect butterfly

humming its wing-song, ending lives

infinities away for all eternity.

We don’t know!

We can’t know!

We’re all trapped inside our own minds,

gibbering to ourselves while we pretend to understand

this reality revolving around us –

because the human way is to live by conjecture based on

illusion based on perception.

The capacity for our sanity must be enormous,

because if it’s otherwise –

if our bag of marbles has smashed open,

and we’ve self-imploded already and this

life is just the last moments of the neutron star,

fusion dead and cold, ready in its spinning speck for

the supernova -

then God help us.

Why do I bother trying to understand the universe?

When there are universes enough inside my voice,

unnumbered unfound doorways,

a few of which I take and lovingly empty

onto these pages, tracing the birth and dark

of incredible worlds with the

rolling ink of a pen.

Oh, to have the ability to give up this

life and jump into my own eternity,

to spin my own humble heaven –

I’d make myself a small house with a porch,

sit with notebooks and pens to

watch each day as it walks by,

to write

until every cell

winks out and I am filled with

billions and billions of supernovas.

Because each and every one of us has his own path to walk,

and the only meaning to find is in what we do in the

absolute moment of our existence.

And I know now that meaning can be found even in loneliness,

but never in blank reams –

So I plan to go with pen in hand,

scribbling my voice as the

bells begin to cry in that grey morning light –

worried only in those final racing moments

about finishing my last piece.

Ten Paces and Gone

Been thinking. I'm about to leave Connecticut, and how I've been feeling about it is wrapped up in this poem.

Ten Paces

On the shaded and winding roads
swept over by a summer
and drowning in humidity,
all of the cars are passing me by.

Kept between and around each slow beam of sunlight,
I am driving south.
Kept behind the steering wheel, I am drinking coffee
just to stay interested.

These days, writing myself dry in the dark mornings,
I am finding my way clear of
the stench of déjà vu -
breathing heavily to empty lungs,
air spinning out to stop and slow,
harden into concrete.

Driving away from this place,
all of the pretty Connecticut girls
are passing me by.

These days, lifting and carrying, straining with everything I have,
I’m building up again -
finished with living in rubble,
of picking through debris and
calling it justified.

Kept inside this rotted tree,
I am sick of scrabbling for cracked open acorns -
fallen crabapples.

Driving as fast as I can,
all of the pretty Connecticut girls are going north,
wrapped in sunglasses,
passing me by.

An Anniversary

If you live your life to be judged only by the things you leave behind,
leaved behind something worth judging.
It's in your hands.
Our speck of light in the span of history is
identical,
quivering symmetrical to every pulsing beam
that reached a broken conclusion.
On the surface,
the historian is the same as the meth addict -
the country music idol jangling the same three chords over
and through the cracks in his crooning voice has no more
impact than the sacrificed boy
lost in the mud in deep
old Europe -
It's the details,
the simple, tiny irrelevant bits that mesh together to form
the winding down gleaming clockwork of our
haste,
the scraps of our lives that stay after consciousness drifts and
tired eyes sag.
These are what defines us.
What defines me, to date,
what I'd leave -
three grudges, two of them justified.
Six guitar strings stretching to hum notes and quiver the dust away -
and my poems.
My deranged dancing of ink on paper
carved grooves of my thoughts blazing inside notebooks,
winking from the whitewash of a computer screen
My poems, pulsing with the rhythm of my heartbeat and the
flashing race of pen flying through to touch
and bring a smile
slip in and lay itself on a heart,
echo there amidst the love and hate
reverberating with joy and barely
repressed anger,
filling the depths of heartbreak,
whistling the soft breeze of a chuckle.
Here is where you'll find what I choose to leave behind -
words given life with love and having
all of the power of meaning behind them
etched somewhere inside
you.

New Poem (Dylan)

New poem here - one of the several I've put together since School got out that are not really possible to post to my preferred spot of Facebook. (So begins the first step in my effort to transfer all of my writing to someplace with some sort of credibility).

Dylan

Burning down coffin nails in

The shining two AM Charleston night,

She says she’s through

Falling in love with men with latino accents –

Finished with tongues oozing romance and mystery

While they slide over her teeth

Her eyes blaze out at me from the

Grey smoke entwining with her hair,

Glowing brown,

Dark with practice and never hidden out of habit

She breathes

A mantra that reaches for a connection,

Preaching understanding for everyone she can find.

I tell her we’re all spinning our

Own paths and so conflict is inherent

She grins her way through a grimace,

Telling me that’s what should be solved.

Two months later, in the thick

Caffeine air of some coffee shop,

She’s feeling back to the familiar,

Laying a gentle paw on the hand of

Another mexican boy,

Smile draped languidly over her face,

Turning him and me to her

As she walks out into the neon and salt moonlight –

It’s the last I see of her.

Shouting Distance

So it's 1:18 AM here in cold, rainy Connecticut. Naturally, I'm drinking coffee and so I'm too jumpy to sleep. I'm actually fairly impressed that this cup of coffee is able to have the normal caffeine effects on me. These days, it seems like I only drink the stuff to keep headaches at bay. It is the good New England Dunkin' Donuts coffee however, and I suppose that's got to count for something.

I've been doing a lot of writing lately, most of it un-directional. I try and at least free-write every day (something which I hope this blog will help out with) simply so I don't get plugged up. That's how I spent most of last summer; stoppered up. I ignored what I had proclaimed was my passion, passing it up for a routine of boredom.

Trapped in those last days of summer before leaving this town, I was spinning like a gerbil on a wheel. Each day, in and out, ran together until I couldn't tell the difference. And it was my own fault.

Each day feels the same when you wake to each moment being the same.

That summer, after the mess that June turned into, and the trips I took in July, I came back to a home that already felt like a stranger. My friends were gone, out of the country - that month they existed only through the blank face of the internet. So, I spent August running. I don't think that there was a conscious reason why - but looking back, it was all that I could do. Running was the only way I could prove to myself that each day was different.

Every morning, I'd pound my way up the hill, wiping sweat from my eyes. Feet slapping pavement, I'd tell myself "If I’m here, when the music is here, then I’m further along than yesterday." Each day was an exercise to see how many seconds I could shave off the first mile. How many more mailboxes I could pass before taking my first break.

I passed a month that way, and by the end I wanted to scream.

It was a sinking, heavy, grasping feeling; knowing that no matter how fast I ran, or how much energy I spent to shove my body down the road, I was pounding down the same streets I’ve pent my entire life on. I realized that I wanted to get my head up and away from the same stretch of road I spent every morning on. I wanted to go running and pass people that I’d never seen before, to run in a path that I’d never taken, to fly past the sights and sounds and smells of a place that I want to be in.

I’m sick of this town, sick of the choking familiarity of it. I was sick of it then, and I'm sick of it now - especially now that I know what I've taken myself away from.

So, this summer, I'm thumbing my nose at the slipping hands of the clock which strive to slowly and noiselessly pull valuable time from my fingers. With every word I write, with every image I prevent from vanishing into thin air, I'm preserving the person I'm growing into.

Ninety-Five

A new poem:

Ninety Five into the harsh spawning sun
glaring on westernmost Rhode Island
Ninety Five down the dagger bright strips of asphalt
crossing through the strange no-man’s land
of almost ordered forests
- The four miles where nature seems to hold her breath
and huge dawn arcs above
Ninety Five quivering on the speedometer as I’m banging
sleep-numbed fingers against the steering wheel,
grimacing my way through a song
Ninety Five struggling just to keep eyes slit and clear
Ninety Five ripping across a road that’s never meant
anything to anyone –

Rampaging north into the east,
screaming something that
ends in an undignified yelp
as gold flashes out from the hacked and unkempt treeline –

I lock yammering eyes with some confused deer as
hundreds of pounds of metal and flesh,
encased in bubbling air rushes in with the wind and
every ray of light to flip on a second

Flying through as I’m staring
lost in huge empty circles
and I know
That in hundreds of different branches of this moment,
Off through other worlds than this,
I am dying.


But,
in this one the deer blinks dual bands of light
and I fly past,
Ninety-five down Ninety Five,
shuddering.