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.