Set a Goal

I only want,

to understand who you are tonight,

and we each buy our own drinks.

The Retreat

I am your

fair wanderer impressed

upon pages, under wineglasses

Cohesive like the clots

that suffer the winds in your bloodstream.

I hold fast to this earth

I sit scolded at the bottom of the sea.

I had miscalculated, for Rhode was too much for me.

Stories

I will tell stories of you,

To my children, and grandchildren,

Long after you've forgotten.

I will still whisper your name,

Absent-mindedly,

When you have left.

I cannot help but associate you

With all the good that has come my way-

You are an immediate dream,

An endless epic.

Poise

Your growls,

Your purrs,

Your gasps,

Your slurs,

We'll run this life ragged,

You and I.

Love is the sense I have made from a world with you in it.

Primrose Hill

And my hands clenched the big earth,

The sod too full of water, the grass so fresh,

I cried to the first man who passed by,

"I have traveled so far! I have loved so much!

My dear, my heart is yours, yours, yours,

I merely carry it while I live.

To dust we so return,

And if God made us for such a feat,

I will shake his hand and slap his face!

I will love you regardless!"

I was made for me, and I give this to you. Love is what you cannot help but give, as if the whole world was made to push you to do it. As if everything was in place, waiting for you to get here.

Echo-Love calling Banjo-One-Niner. The outer space is cold. Really pretty out here. Makes me think of Reenie. How're Norbert and Fern? You should come see the time shooting out. Man, ain't that something. With open arms. Ciao.

Woods and Ferns

I am slowly disappearing into the golden mist of what I think should be.

Nevada

It's alright,

I see you in everything,

You are every empty mile,

And I have loved you over all of them.

Obsydian

Under cover of night

Panthers and foxes we

Marry and divorce,

Trail off into wisps

Ever to be gathered around the lantern of the nightwatchman

Prepared for Sunday service.

I Cannot Thank You Enough

The ache in my bones,

The future in my eyes,

The pressing forward,

The laughter that makes us shake and shake and shake in the grass.

Lean-To

Inevitably,

Hands close once more upon the rope, upon the handle

Knotted forearm muscles spell age,

Like tree rings.

How the eye changes with sight,

How the spirit rallies the body,

How the mantras tick over in our hearts.

Hideaway, Revelation

Under the laurels,

I planted my soul,

And I went into the world.

Someday I will climb back there,

Dispatched and over,

Or I will have one of my children fetch it.

And I will again speak to the sky for comfort,

And ask the plates about divorce,

I will be ready for their answers.

Slowly my track will become lighter,

And my bones hollower,

Until with the full laughter of my life,

Every Spring comes to bloom at once.

Tectonic

Whatever they say of me,

Even if it is of loss,

Will have been centuries in the making,

As old as the cracks in my hands,

Are my feelings for you.

For Your Travels and Travails

In silent Love,

Go in good peace,

For we embrace as equals,

And once met those like us,

Are never truly alone.

And again and again, we drink the inseparable fire from living.

The Cabin

There were dedications and promises,

Carved into its sides,

Entire lives and deaths,

Written around the cracks,

And both intimate and private wars,

Remembered inside the knots.

Cut off my tongue if I speak ill of you,

Cut off my hand if I do you wrong.

Time to Take Me

Please take me under the cherry trees,

With bluets to hear my final satisfactions,

Stories about you all,

My friends,

Stories until you can see every one of them behind my eyes.

The Cycles

When we are gone,

An others take our place,

Perhaps with houses of their own,

Or even liver spots and pensions,

Will our eyes still meet the same?

Will I hear this note until I have no ears?

An Admonishment

Even while we are meant, destined,

Encouraged and driven forward,

Let us also be here,

In laughter or silence or whatever that means.

Materials for Building

Tonight, a nod to

a youth of curves,

games and quick brushes,

rushes of foreign flowers.

Warm forms that rested

under unpolluted stars,

alerting any and all to the importance

that comes with investing belief.

Spoken Threads

Just to be there,

Privy to all the whispers that escape,

Like messengers to the conscience of a future self,

Take care, Take heart, Take each minute for its own.

The Light Behind

I love you,

Even though you will not remember,

Dangling from my wrists,

Around and around,

You must learn for yourself.

Vergennes Methodist Church Circular Excerpt

"We packed up the differences between us, possessions mostly: alarm clocks and magazines, the last of the tobacco paper, those coasters I never used. We left it all in two proud blue pieces of luggage, bulging at us from the centre of the room. I wondered for the briefest moment whether or not I should leave a fiver on top for the housekeeping, or the police, but my wallet was buried deep in the left bag and her hand was already around and pulling mine, and one of our hands was on the doorknob but I can't remember whose, and I can definitely tell you that the latch caught but after that I couldn't help you. If you want to know about my hands and feet, or her eyes and the way she laughs I'm an expert, but beyond that brother, you're up shit creek."

-Nathan Langley, September 1982, in response to being asked how he and his wife Molly had managed to live 116 years.

Seatlle

I was made fearless,

By the tempest that was,

And the firestorm you broke into,

As time stripped us down,

To solid truths.

Incantations

Dear,

Every scientific breakthrough,

And all the lives of the saints,

Don't get at me like you do.

Just keep whispering those tender,

Vital words around our lives.

"Will I see you again?"

In the Quiet Wind

Your long skirt

always spoke to me of

being lost and loved and loving,

billowing in a dream of our own making.

Something to be proud of.

Dear All,

I have hurt and been hurt like never before. This space is entering its second closure for the foreseeable future. So it goes.

Love,

Tyler

You spoke to me of

Your grandfather's plane crash in Korea

As I traced the caps of your knobby knees.

I'm in search of a home.

Rushing Forward, Keep Calm

youth and attention to heart lines

the dew on my cheeks when I wake up

such things I am

No Succession

Triumphantly,

The emperor's casket passed into the grounds,

Black pillars weeping history,

And their city as it burned.

His final instruction as it turned out,

For despite having children, still feeling so ill-placed.

The Plains All White

They told me of winter,

Frostbite,

Problems in your hands,

But my eardrums thrummed with forsaking,

Swallowed up in clothes,

I fled the acreage unevenly,

And left the problems with my hands to themselves,

I am young again.

The snow is up to my knees.

Snow fox, come along.

Parenting

Mother, Father!

My face really did get stuck this way,

Just like you said!

But I just had to make that little girl smile.

It's All in Your Approach to the Shot

We would've made contact sooner,

Had we not been so dense,

As is the common critique of us I know,

A smirk and shrug saves it ever being written down,

But I'm just glad we did,

Changed our wanting, upturned hands into,

Inviting handshakes - As if to say:

"Hi, how're you? Can I get to know you?

Ontario

Every beautiful thing I have seen,

Or felt or made or been a part of,

Will come spilling from my eyes and nose,

Like an upset lemonade pitcher,

When I'm quitted and my components judged,

Fit for some other use.

Permanence

My eyes stare

The motion sizzles, quivers

Like shadows on white sheets

At some point most of it's behind us

And the changing colours become our Heaven

I have loved you with what I have.

Becoming

Sleep well,

As the old hands of our fathers and mothers,

Become our own,

And experience helps us talk each other to sleep.

Even if you bequeathed me

Ten thousand years to plant in good soil

I would tear it all to the wind in a cacophony of moments

Axiom

We are walking, talking

Laughing heartfelts

Tripping over wise words and

Wondering about our places.

Seneca

You've got a point there.

Tell you what

I'll trade you some bottles and pouches

To lighten my load

In return for your least favourite cane

And some piece of everyone's mind

So I can tell what's mine.

Misdirection

My Love,

What if this whole time,

I were really an owl,

Picking mice out from between,

The old church stones.

Would you find me then?

Jubilee, I Gave You Away

Flooded,

They broke in upon,

Our quiet campaign.

All rights and liberties,

Flushing your face so red.

Nigel

But - I asked him,

What about the house lights?

Will it always be just me?

He leaned across,

I made up constellations,

For the freckles on his forearm,

"If there's no one else,

Then we'll go by moonlight my friend."

An Inkling

We'll find out

That it was all just like

Plucking at the grass

Being & waiting to be.

Press Pass

We mentioned Newt

And probably inhaled

So many neon signs missing letters.

Big Sky

I remember

It was spiritual

I felt swallowed, scared

I felt it was best

To put one foot in front of the other

My place in this universe

So loveably small

Those two words meeting in my mind

For the first time

Like separated twins

Or Bartimaeus' first glimpses of Jericho

And I saw you.

Inundated, I fell away for a while.

Mesa

Settled down

In wanting red dust

He leaned on his shovel like some

Unwelcome scepter

The fence stretching back

Miles now

But they've had no reason to put the kettle on

Since the well ran dry.

That's your education,

When the well runs dry.

Equivalency

We try so hard,

To explain and package,

Everything that we are and feel,

And is happening right up to now,

The same as when I was little,

Alone in the upstairs closet,

Trying to put on all of my father's shirts and ties,

All at the same time,

Each foot in one shoe from each of his two pairs.

Quietly In Spirit, With No Alarm

We crawled out from under,

Quilts that our grandmothers slaved over,

With our bodies feeling like they do,

Right out on the edge - all open

Swirling air and toes gripping,

Cold flat rock,

Like some tiny amount of control,

Was already being redressed to the grave,

Drawn back through our shadows,

Barely the size of children,

We made eggs and opened the window,

And talked as the temperatures equalized,

About Caroline, and how living

Never gets done feeling new,

And if we had enough money to spring

To get a bigger freezer,

While Hugh mowed serpentine across his yard,

The green scent meandering gently around our noses.

Tomorrow's Monday

So concerned that I

Am drastically behind schedule

At being the person and everything I want to be.

People are dropping like flies out there.

Let the Meeting Begin

The gnats like shooting stars,

Diving at the underwater light,

I felt so small up there,

So quietly representative,

Before diving in,

Listening to the congregation of bubbles,

The glaze that moves with my hands,

Sweeping around itself,

So unconcerned, or entirely there,

All the secret voices,

But before I could respond,

Laughter.

Reverse Mortgage

I awoke to doublestopped time,

Dylan's glasses and bedeviled,

Impossible infinitesimals in the floorboard,

Instinctively I reached for my face,

To feel for a bearing on my age,

And found it full of hiding places,

Not even a majority occupied,

Drinking from Mímisbrunnr,

Was probably a mistake in hindsight.

What I Remember

She made the autumn leaves,

Into boats that sailed down the creek,

Where the old folks washed their clothes,

We should've stockpiled our innocence,

But we were abandoned to it,

Like Icarus,

She had difficulty understanding the word dream,

We wrote new stories in the dirt after every storm,

About Aeneas, and Heloise, and Jesus, and Wiglaf,

She made my heart beat so bad,

Every time she skipped ahead,

Her hands covered in the granules of the earth.

The Epilogue Always Contains a Wedding

Balcony,

You sit like

You're so full of volumes

Weighed down with thirty,

The future,

Your too tamed tongue

Carmine your dress

Lacks nothing.

Your luster keeps up with the times

Until the dark very morning

Where coffee is more stirred than enjoyed

Early Morning, Full of Gusto

I want to throw my fresh-legged twenties,

Into you with smirked, swelled veins,

To repurchase every hillock and hostel alike,

To dig our feet into sunset sands,

The only fitting memory we have rights to demand,

To become new fictions to fall asleep with,

Luminous in space and time,

As entropy works accentuated knuckles,

Around the stars we dine by.

As It Always Moves

Sleepless,

Feeling for the fresh, new calluses,

Like the ones father was given,

After he buried the hound dog,

And wouldn't say a word at dinner.

Still that child,

Without any brothers or sisters,

Walking out along the fenceline.

Family Farm

You are

The tall grass I

Spent the whole summer

Talking to God in

Gödel

Perhaps the incompleteness

Is where we're supposed to fit

Pascalian nostalgia for trying

To merge into us.

Other Impressions Than the First

Your face will forever

Rack me of all coherency

Like domesticated fusion

Being Small

I remember,

Leaning over ledges,

Looking up staircases,

Watching the tops of the trees,

Pass backwards through sunroofs.

I've seen meteor showers,

Barely keeping my eyes open it was so early,

And I've woken up outside.

I've looked down on highways from mountains,

Made forts under covers,

Cautiously peering out from under the edges,

At a foreign world.

Rain running down windows,

Still holds my attention,

And when I get groceries,

I always ride the carts,

Out to the parking lot.

Being small is,

The best thing that ever happened to us.

Unwelcome Projections

In my dreams, not the ones where we're in incredible places, but the ones where the months fly out from now like so many dealt cards, I sit on a bench with its best days behind it, I wonder who put it there, what age of civic engagement it must have been to put a bench by a lake so distant from anywhere else, in fact I can't remember where I am, only that it is peaceful and that you are somewhere. And I'm always holding something to give: a mess of papers, wrapped up poorly-prepared cookies, once a cactus. So I know you must be coming, but the there's not much sun left, and first I sit atop the bench, then lay down across it, then return to how I started, with my hands and whatever item in my lap. And I feel that where I am must be so hard to find, that I know you must be looking, but when it gets dark, but never so far along that there's absolutely no sun, I start to worry that you wanted to find me but had to give up, and it's just me and the lake and the bench still, but no longer peaceful, and I worry, and I wake up.

Where Your Hair Sticks To Your Forehead

In silence,

He held down her pointed shoulders,

Against the sharp intake of breath,

Leaning, one leg up on,

The bare wood panelling.

"It's balmy" she finally said,

And he thought of all the places,

He wished he could take her.

Wooden Bowls

Tepidly

We closed the church doors

And Later we regretted it

Over fowl and bread

Madame De Beauvoir, did you ever skinny-dip with someone you had a crush on?

Wise Beyond Our Years

Off down the way

From the railroad crossing we hid

Waiting for the train to come rumbling by

Your lips to come rumbling over mine

So much time to come rumbling after itself

Like the dirt falling from your red knees

As we stood when it was quiet again

For the rest of my life I would hear that train

A truer heartbeat than my own chest

Meting out the deeper tethers

Like they were the very rails it ran on

And towards the end

I stopped trying to see beyond its natural bend

Off down the way

From the railroad crossing we hid

Your hands felt like the answer to so many questions

I didn't know I had

Generation Gap

Our heads filled to the brim,

Minds like a rolling boil,

That when they finally cool,

And we skip buttons at last,

Our children won't know,

Looking into that still water,

If it's still too hot to touch

Hole in the Wall

My hand,

Confident on the small of your back,

As we listen to the harmonies keep,

The spaces between them perfect,

Like middle school dancers.

And we laughed at how odd it was,

For our bodies to briefly match our minds.

Dearest

I love you like you are the other half of everything I do,

Like you are the finish to my sentences

And the light when I turn on a lamp.

I love you as a culmination,

As if all of my senses were meant solely

To be aware of you,

My eyes to see you, hands to feel you,

Nose to breathe you,

Ears to listen and mind to think of you.

I love you as a first response,

Like how I love the mountains and open lanes at night

And I love you with all the time that I have to give.

I love you regardless and with no hope of stopping.

I love you because pulling a book off the shelf,

I always want to see your face from the next aisle over.

(Tiny) Circular Logic

So many things,

Have to be said,

Across too small breakfast tables,

Over linoleum floors,

Under doors that don't keep the heat in,

So that they sink in,

So that you remember,

Everything, every bit,

Was done in the name of

Sunday crosswords,

Bad impressions,

Softly speaking hands,

Across a much too small breakfast table.

Rebroadcast

Subconsciously,

Thumb and forefinger pulling,

Nipping at the burgundy upholstery,

He thought:

I can feel my whiskers growing.

And:

Which of these demons can I deal with.

And:

Are any of them ghosts?

And:

My stomach is empty.

And:

This too shall pass.

As the fire flicked reminders off his barely four year old wedding ring.

How to Say

I keep coming back to this dream: You were asleep in the passenger seat, with the back adjusted to be as horizontal as possible, and you were wrapped in the thickest blanket we had brought. I drove us out of the campgrounds, and then I had the unstoppable feeling that both of us were perfectly content with that moment, and that that made all of the moments before then more vivid and unique. I counted the miles to the rise and fall of your shoulder, and drove in the complete opposite of my normal style to keep you asleep. That's how it ends, with more driving and those good feelings and you resting beside me in the early afternoon.

To [People]

You are honestly, despite whatever you may have tried in the past, be it any cream, ointment, surgery, or twin-switching, ridiculously weird. You are something different from me, but not at all separate. You are downright peculiar, and it shows. Loudly. And that is why I love you. This is something that once you come to understand it, will make you feel awesomer. We are all paste-eaters who were sick and tired of these uncomfortable shoes and just wanted it to be 5 pm and time for a snack already, in one way or another.

Certified Escapee

Here's to all the curfews

You never intended to keep.

Get them back by

taking leave of your nursing home

via the window.

Grandpa

If I happen to find myself 70 years old,

The vast majority of what I say had better be jokes.

Washington, the Evergreen State

I want to sit,

And be silent,

With you. More than anything,

With you.

I want the wood of the house to breathe,

In line with our breathing.

I want to mark time by the rising and falling

Of your chest.

I yearn for that evidence of another world

That you brought to me

Like so many precious things.

You are such a precious thing.

I want to meet a child,

Who has run ahead of his parents,

Chasing a creek under grateful shade,

And I want to tell him of the love of this world,

Using you as an example.

I want my first reaction when I wake,

To be to reach for you.

I want my first reaction deep in the night,

To be to reach for you.

I like that I always reach.

Listen: Cherish the people

That make time utterly irrelevant.

In the fall

We dried the tomatoes ourselves

And told stories of what our grandparents did

Waving from a Train Bound for Aveiro

It's little things,

Standing still,

Eyes closed,

Looking up,

Inhaling the rest of it,

That keep the priorities straight.

It's big things,

Midnights making schematics,

Losing speaking terms,

Taking sides,

Generation gaps,

That strengthen the heart.

It's beautiful things,

Dinners,

Holding hands,

First days,

First dates,

That keep the pages turning.

It's rare things,

Revelations,

Being smitten,

Laughing where you can't breathe,

Finding your centre,

That keep us young.

It's you,

It's you,

It's you

Minefields

Down the hall,

Our young bare feet scamper,

Lightly on the carpet on the wood,

Wondering what's supposed to happen,

Turning corners going straight,

Tangling up teens and twenties,

And sequences,

Doors serve to man a watch,

As our young bare feet scamper,

Up onto down on cotton on springs,

To finish books that have been bugging us,

For weeks now.

There's Going to Be a Lot of "I Told You So"

It will be big,

It will be massive,

It will blow every one of our minds,

It will be like a parade, but on steroids!

And everyone will know everyone there.

It will be full of motion, like dancing,

It will be one giant overdue airport reunion!

I honestly cannot wait,

To see every one of your beautiful faces there.

1953

Pretty, Caroline watched the flower basket twirl,

Canterbury bells peeking over like baby birds,

The houseboat was just right, she thought,

Maine was just right,

Ike was just right,

As if from some mental connection,

Which she secretly believed in and he secretly believed in,

But neither would mention it to the other,

For 52 years, which might as well have been forever,

He appeared behind her,

And the Canterbury bells spun,

And he touched her just right,

And that's how I was put here on this busy planet.

Who says there isn't a God!

Who could possibly be that blind?

Faintly, a piano

Whispered away while the children

Fought to keep their eyes open in their beds

How did that story end?

Well It Was Worth A Shot

A man, once,

No one remembers his name,

In the minutes before he died,

Thought up what, to him,

Seemed a very promising venture.

As he died,

As people were busy not knowing he was dying,

He queried his creator,

Who was busy creating other things,

Why he shouldn't perhaps live on?

The man had acquired a vast amount of knowledge,

More than anyone else on the planet,

And had contributed and advanced even more,

And would it not be a terrible crime,

To let such a prize dissolve right then and there?

His creator responded:

"But that's what's so impressive about death!

You live it all and then suddenly,

Wham! Zowwy! Poof!"

When Holy June Came

When holy June came,

We forgot what we had learned,

And stayed inside way too much.

Crowd Me

It all feels very,

[Hah. Feelings.]

Open, spacious, slow,

There's a perimeter and I don't know,

What could possibly be beyond it.

But it's flat where I am,

Yellow grass and moss,

And room for just one more person,

In all of this space,

We need so much more space than this life provides,

Room to thrash, ramble, pace, cartwheel,

Weep,

Leapfrog,

See how far we can spit.

It's incredible how much I want you here,

In this not big enough space with me.

Belgium

It would be a Thursday,

Because they're the best for surprises,

There would be pastries,

There would still be bits of flower on the counter,

I would make a drug reference,

You would put up with it,

My hands would rest lightly on your hips,

(The best part of the day)

I always think we fit perfectly,

One against the other,

There would be a window, curtains and a breeze,

There would be a park to get lost in,

There would be jobs patiently waiting for us on Monday,

And years to swallow us up,

And years and years.

The Other Side of the Coin

The jumpy eyes,

The searching, scattering, reassembling hands,

The mental fox hunt,

For hints of hope, what's more:

Happiness.

The things you don't see over the phone,

Desperate, determined, exhausted, and wanting,

Wantingwantingwanting,

To get it, to click, to see you smile,

Because of me again,

Fragile though it all may be.

I've lost the ability to say my chances, and I'm sure more than a few people are glad to see me finally on the receiving end of this thing.

Upon Observation

Differences:

Societies, languages, governments,

Governors, religions, rituals,

Skill sets, experiences, vacations.

Similarities:

You, Me.

The Autopsy

After they had made the proper incisions,

Inside they found no organs or vitals,

Save a note:

"I have no more use of it,

Adieu."

Sojourner

I have been out here for days,

In my head, searching, finding,

Excavating with all the blunt precision of an amateur,

Plumbing depths I cannot breathe in,

Dying, and seeing what I find there too.

River

When I am with you I am close to a river,

Deep and moving and only fools think controlled,

And I like nothing more than to sit at your banks,

And listen to all the life inside you.

Exuberance

Abounding, sounding and resounding!

I fly from here to there,

Though you think me forever in one place,

I am many and I am always,

And as such I shall be forgotten,

And as such I shall always love you!

In a Storm

In a storm with lightning all around,

There is no judgement,

There is no punishment and only the hope of reward,

[Is this life not enough?]

There is only you,

And others like you,

And what you carry and what they carry,

And the weapons you choose to make of them.

A(nother) Thought

Thumbing the entirety of pages,

After finishing a brick of a novel,

Sounds like applause to me.

Le Sigh

Sighs are the balloons we lose,

Or give away in parking lots,

In carnival crowds,

At foreign locations,

Drifting up, over, away,

Towards each other,

Containing whatever the air was meant to say.

Desire #5,832

I want to mark the seasons,

By the changing tones of your skin.

Waiting for a Show at Eleven

Maryn,

On the nape of my neck,

And I'm still thinking I'm thinking and thinking:

I should have gone out to that movie instead. 

Pine cones are just prime numbers.

So It Begins and So It Goes

The so it begins part:

My original intent was to have a separate blog for the more prose-y nonfictional things that germinate in my head, but a stubbornly uneditable picture of an amazingly happy orange picker has let me to scrap the dual blog idea and simply use my only trick of posting here. 

The so it goes part:

Hopefully obviously and sadly, "so it goes" is a quote from Kurt Vonnegut, most memorably from Slaughterhouse-five, and it is used after people die or otherwise exit conscious humanity. I've adopted the phrase into my own views on the subject. This bears significance right now because a good friend of mine, though I think the degree of friendship is a bit unbalanced (dear readers this is not a one-likes-one-loves instance, I purely mean that I think I want to be stronger friends with her than she with me.) , told me today that among a list of things going on in her life, a friend from back home passed away/passed on/et cetera. She was our age I believe, and my friend was not in what I would call mourning, but just that stage where you find it hard to grasp, and I agree. 

I mean, it seems like a bit of of a crap time to die. I can understand dying when you're old or even just starting the tail-end of life. You've had time to do things, you've experienced a hell of a lot hopefully, and you can't really expect to beat all the odds. And I can understand people dying very young. You haven't had all of those experiences, and though it's still pretty cheap at least....I don't know.... you didn't know about them? I think dying young feels to us outsiders like a smaller rug is being ripped out from under the aforementioned deceased than dying when this girl did. Right in the middle of things. Right in the freaking middle. 

But I have trouble being very angry about it whenever I think beyond my initial emotions. I don't think there's a monstrously horrible room that you are transported to after you die so that you can have ample amounts of time to lament the circumstances of your death. I think caring about this life stops when this life stops, which is wonderful. I'm going to have to work how to remember people into that idea though. Into my little construct that keeps me sane/persevering amidst probably a plethora of falsities (see there "probably" was the lifeline. And I get to quote myself. Hoho). 

What I'm thinking this time is just how dividing it is. The same event is both stopping short so much and opening the biggest door I've ever heard of. No one knows for sure what's beyond this life. I for one think it will be good. I think that no matter what we've done here, that no punishment is eternal. Nothing in this life makes me think things are that far-reaching, both good deeds and bad eventually run their course. Maybe that's the budding economist in me, but if what you do right and wrong here eventually acts out and the Supreme Being has a choice, I believe God is good and that given infinity, He could warm up to us. Hell seems more rash than just. 

This whole spiel got very far away from a girl who died around age 18-19-20. A friend of a friend. God bless her. 

I have a macroeconomics test tomorrow, which is now today, and to the best of my knowledge I'm not going to find out what's behind that door between now and 9:05 am. I also thought of a few more things I'd like to write (fiction, don't worry, not another drab, almost stream-of-consciousness ramble such as this) as well. I think I shall mosey on back to my room and see if I can dream some of them out a ways.

Hoping all is well with you and yours

-b

Written On a Small Pane of Glass

In Case of Emergency,

Danger,

Whatever,

Break misgivings,

Chill. Enjoy.

Martyr Much? and Elsewhere and The Truth

If I bleed in the dark,

And don't want you to see,

It's only because it's fitting,

And very very manly.

~

In the snowfall,

I revealed my true self,

White as its surroundings,

I didn't tell a soul.

~

How do I tell you,

That I have no idea how to get to point B?

*

When I am old,

Unshaven,

Dying,

If my daughters are there,

May they be mine,

Unfettered,

And innocent of my past,

May they never think that I struggled for them,

May they think me a loafer!

Though I break nightly,

Doubt eternal,

A life spent doubled over on the floor in uncertainty,

And in striving,

Let them think I gave from abundance,

So that they owe me nothing,

Because they owe me nothing!

Because they are a blessing!

Lord I am old,

I ramble,

My endnotes on this life are too long.

If nothing else:

Protect my girls from the guilt of having!

May we be equal!

God receive us all or none!

Out of Date

And then it came into view. Just a tiny roof the colour of seagulls' wingtips, but as I came closer the house grew white walls, and a fence extended out from the right and terminated before it could enclose anything. Maybe to keep the wind off a garden, I thought, what with the usual calibre of coastal gusts in Scotland. I didn't hurry my pace when I saw the house. In five minutes time I had reached what could be considered their yard, though there was no land division between it and the countryside. 

Extending my hand to knock on the door, I stopped, and slowly put my knuckles against the old white wood. 

I had somehow forgotten that my armhair was white.

Whiskers chased up the digits of my right hand. My hair was white. My hat was out of style, yet another casualty of being a packrat. My suitcases felt heavier in my hands than they should. There were too many things.

I realized that knocking would, for once, be inappropriate. As my hand moved down the door, I slid my fingers around the knob, turning it slowly. The door opened loudly, its age greeting my own, and I looked inside.

Nicole was at a stove, and I wondered why I hadn't smelled anything before when a blast of breakfast scents-teas, sausage, potatoes-filled my mind. Inadvertently my tongue licked my lips.

"My sentiments exactly," Nicole said. Footsteps reached my ears and Anna came into view. It was just like I'd hoped I'd imagine it, though I never let myself. The second I did it wouldn't happen. That's just how they were. 

"You look well traveled. And I hope well-versed too," Anna said, her warm eyes registering my changes. The hair, the bags. Not the hat.

"I hope so too. Or else this whole wayward traveler thing will have been massively unprofitable."

"Ever the economist," her eyes closed as she savored the smells that had overwhelmed me earlier. Anna had last known me as an economist. As the late Kurt Vonnegut said of the Bokonist response to what was going through my head: busybusybusy.

"Yea, well. Some things don't shake out I guess." I thought of Marie. I couldn't help it.

"True statement," Nicole said.

"So I assume you are a devout censorship lawyer who would like nothing better than to mute mankind, and Nicole is a devout member of the Church now, right?" I looked from one to the other as I entered the hut. 

"Fuck that!" Nicole smiled, "Fuck the apostles, fuck-"

"Pontius Pilot," I interrupted.

"Yes!"

"Sedentary rock," I mused. Our histories intermingled in the present, and the words made sense and were all the more delicious knowing that, though everyone in the room knew what they meant, we were the only ones.

I pulled out a chair and sat at the table Anna had moved to. She asked how I'd found them. I told her that they were, in fact, listed in official government publications based on official government surveys that they had officially filled out. 

"I guess a better question is why did you find us?" Her voice reflected the waning patience she had for my taste for the literal. 

"Marie died," I said, because that as why.

"Who?" Nicole put a plate in front of me, and sat beside Anna, her arm resting on Anna's shoulder.

"I've been on a lot of trains lately, except I took a bus mostly to get here," I added helplessly.

"They have buses that run all the way out here?" Nicole asked.

"She was my daughter. And no. I walked the last few miles."

As quickly as they had followed me into transportation issues, they followed me back, and were silent. Anna reached out and covered my hand with hers. I put the fork, now useless to my trapped hand, down on the dark wood.

"And your wife?"

"Dead. Longer." More silence. I wished I could get to my pen so I could scribble.

"And you thought we could-"

"No no no. No. I just wanted to go somewhere. I've been to a lot of places actually, mostly Europe. I just wanted to see you two. See if you'd made it here like you always planned."

In my course of travel since Marie's death, some of the people who I encounter, when shown how lucky they are, avert their gaze as if ashamed of succeeding. Anna and Nicole keep themselves, and there is a quiet pride in the room. A room they had secured for themselves, god-dammit, come what may, and I love them for it. 

My hand is freed, and I finish my breakfast. They show me the best views from the cliffs ("their" cliffs"), and we talk until nightfall. Then Anna goes into another room and returns with some wine. We drink and talk. About college. About families. About man's ability to comprehend, or lack thereof, or degree to which. I mention fluxes, which I know nothing about, and they laugh. Some of the wine has gone to my head, but not like when I was younger, and I know I will be fine when I tell my two friends politely that I cannot spend the night with them, and that leaving at this point is not new to me.

They don't bicker too much, and let me go. I walk up near the cliffs, feeling the drop-off more than seeing it. The sound of the waves and the night together is even more intoxicating than the wine. I take out my pen and a scrap of paper with only a few scribbles on it. I scribble for a while, then turn the piece over. 

On the back I write this:

Everything shifts back and forth,

Flux,

A sensation warmly confusing, like

Darkness inside a house.

This is also flux:

The small noise behind my thoughts,

That grows into a voice and actions and lives,

Diminishing I find gray knuckles and heavy suitcases,

Where am I going?

The voice is a whisper, which is also a flux,

In and out of hearing. In and out of living.

Where am I going?

To the cliffs, and past them,

For the cliffs are not new,

The Darkness that sleeps over the cliffs,

Is not new either, but a vehicle,

To carry me through all night space,

Even perhaps through the darkness of time,

Though I am old, and have had much of that.

I slept, and felt the night move around me and take me far away. It took me to Marie, to Katherine, to my parents. I saw years in one night, and didn't see. I felt very human, but I felt it like a breeze.

It was certainly not the wine.

~