Alabaster and Birch

If the world were etched in alabaster, tinged only as bleached bones, might I know the difference? Could I imagine colors if none such existed? Are there rainbows of reds, if only my eyes could distinguish those tiny stripes, dissecting each hue into a new dimension of flushes and shades and brushes beyond what my vision perceives. What of touch or smell? Smells of fear, love, sweat and must, salt and sulfur, metallic and rust - what layers doth my nose not pierce, my fingers not feel as I trace each digit across lightly grained wood and the ridges and tales seeping into stone like palm lines and annular rings, storying of fires and storms, sunny seasons and pressures of the earth and waters. Might I touch a stone and find my heart broken from its tragedies and travails. Might I unravel the dreams of trees?


http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20732

I was reading various artists of poetry this morning, and stumbled across this piece by Carl Sandburg. Honestly, I think this piece is a bit brilliant. The poetry embedded carefully in exquisite prose is a marvel, and his execution of color and imagery carries me deep into the forest, the wilderness itself.


A surreptitious delight shrouded in brilliant white, a calvacade of birch, upright and majestic, and slippered in lava leaves. Wind brushes along the path, sweeping ember sparks into the air, crinkling autumn stirred aloft for brief moments of twisting flight, as eddies of breeze whirlwind the fallen leaves from the path and deposit them besides. Promenade por Paradiso. Smells of birch and lichens blend with redolent tastes of pine and violets, and the sound-song sings of the crinkling leaves beneath yellowing maple trees. Is this a temple or a time, this chill forest fire, blazing burrs of Autumn rattling my bones. When the moon's yellowed as ancient parchment, the sky's denim blue covers these sanguine woods, fae light conceives a primal world, precious as eve's garden, and no less silent.

Phantasmagora #2

I'm a smoke machine behind a screen

what do you see?

Is it demons dancing devilish dreams?
Forgotten faces from maddening scenes?

It is the phantasmagora of your mind

what you see is what you'll find 

in me, and you, and you to me

I'm the geis of your crystal ball

Predicting your destiny

All mist and mirrors

I dreamed I missed my own birthday, and a month passed before I realized it. Everyone was shocked and subsequently upset at my lack of concern, and strove in convincing me that my neglect was appalling, and must be remedied immediately. I like birthdays, just not my own. Or, rather, there are aspects that I find tiring regarding my birthday, though I enjoy celebrating my friend's or family's birthdays. It is my little brother Sam's birthday this week - how he's grown since I left home. It's been almost 9 years since I last lived at home permanently, and he's moved from 3rd grade into his senior year of school. You can't tickle a senior in high school, or pick them up and swing them around as they giggle in glee. Senior boys don't giggle with glee much anymore. 

He's as tall as me, now, and I may be the shortest of the children before long. At least mother takes the cake on shortest in the family. There is some solace in that.
What I dislike about my own birthday is that it doesn't seem tailored to me, but tailored to a preconceived perception of what birthdays must entail. My mother asked me today what I wanted for Christmas. I said nothing, and she said, "you'll think of something by the time Christmas comes along." She loves giving, and can't understand that what I actually want, and have always wanted, was nothing. Au contraire, if I had my druthers, instead of receiving love on my birthday, I'd be sharing it. If there was a party, it would be my treat to all my friends. If there was a dinner, I'd cover all the expenses, just to gift everyone else. It seems such a strange thing, but this ideal is stapled into my psyche as the perfect birthday: the one where I bless everyone else who has suffered me a long time, and stuck with me through storm and sun.

It was a quiet day, today. The roommates were all busy, and it seemed no friends were available, which made for a day of rest. I ended up hanging out with friends anyway, but I did manage some rest first. This weekend has been quite fantastic. I got the rest I needed, hung out with friends, went to a wedding, ate delicious food, watched dazzling dancing, ran around outside, kicked around a soccer ball, treated a friend to dinner and discussed our lives, hopes, dreams, destinations. I got to read, write, drink tea, watch the purple-bellied clouds chase the sun out from on high, and a sherbet sunset in an apricot sky. I saw people I've missed, and talked to people I've not seen in some time. I wrote a letter, shared meals, listened to moving music, and talked with my mother and father (they both answered the phone at the same time. Quite cute) about the approaching seasons and times. I'm extraordinarily happy, so I wrote this melancholy poem stream-of-consciousness to represent my joy. It's quite terrible. I blame the macabre chapter of the book I was reading, but I know it isn't entirely to blame. Sometimes I write saddest poetry when at my most pleased. I understand myself better at these times. Or I'm hiding a sadness unknown to me. Probably both.

Lines in your hands reveal peach-pain webs
Spider of time, what anguish have weft
Patent divine, when choice is bereft
Our rivers of life, eddies and ebbs
Speak sister time, does love quite exist?
Palms gently shudder, an asp's poison lips
Fangs sinking deep, bleak destiny sips
Close nect'rine palm, a love hopeless fist
Faithless dear child, what melancholy this?
Confess empty silence, my peace have you cleft?
My only survival, now plainly theft
Sunder me now, from sentiment's kiss
Gently lay down this romance and mirth
Luckless I've found, nothing of worth

Kerberos

A cave of charred shadows and smoldering half-shapes writhing on the walls. Its lofty ceiling stretches beyond the heights of imagination and the darkness swallows it, and though the room is large, an overwhelming claustrophobic sensation passes through me in waves. The ground beneath my knees, where I kneel like he who scoops water in his hands, is a harsh, grey granite, unyielding and gravelly, biting into my legs wherever they meet. And though I would stand - oh, gods, I would do anything to stand - it is beyond my power.
Before me sits a monstrous creature, full of the monstrous hate of primal wolves, and the puissance of the gods. With three heads and imposing wolfish form, it blocks the exit, the bridge into hope, and snarls, growls, bares its teeth.

Dismal den of cerberus
Plaintive I beseech thee thus
Permit me pray to leave disgrace
To hopes past pains and fire's place

Ah, then riddle one must answer thee
To loose thee from Persephone
One snapped, one grins, one speaks plainly
Three the heads of Cerb'rus be

I accept, great and gracious one
Puzzle me quick and let's be done

Then cleared their throats now did the three
And spoke in chorus bass deeply

I journey only east to west
Always seeming to travel east
I come and go and without he
who flees when I at once arrive
You might never know to see me
Wherever my journeys take me
I'll always return full circle

....
Tiny houses you keep not clean
Without windows, rooms, kitchens, floors
No place for friends, family, pets
Only rest, without blankets, beds
......

Committing yourself to a schematic or verse inhibits change. Once you divert from the course you set in motion, the reader can feel jarred, like sleeping in the back of a pleasant car ride, and suddenly you are off-roading, and their lack of seatbelt jostles them all across the back seat. They are not going to be pleased. I'm leaving behind a slew of unfinished entries, and sometime I hope to return and finish them. I'm finding less time for full-scale blogging, and refuse to relinquish journaling time in lieu of online writings. Plus, life has been bipolar busy, and then not busy, and then busy again, in a roller coaster adventure that leaves me running around frantically, resting, then leaping into action once more.
It's a good life, but a hectic one, at times. I realize that sometimes my blogs experience their own little roller coasters of emotion. It's strange that sometimes when I'm happiest, I write sad blogs, and sometimes when I'm saddest, I write happy ones. I don't experience a great depth of sadness in much of my life. I tend to be relatively easy going, and simple peace and living and friends keep me joyful. I think sometimes that I understand sadness more fully on the outside, and happiness more completely when staring at it from the depths of the well. It is this external evaluation that permits me melancholy poetry in times of incredible joy, and a diligence to produce joyful poetry when the world turns upside-down and it seems everything leaves me behind, unnoticed. What a strange phenomenon, but it holds quite true in my writings, even in my more personal journal writings. I'm ever striving for joy, though I still wish to portray the entirety of emotional strata in my human experience. Sometimes, I can only do so when sitting on the other side of the valley. The grass isn't always greener on the other side, but sometimes you only notice it when you've moved past it.
Right now, I'm not moving anywhere. Kerberos is in my way, and my Daedelus wings will not save me now.

Icarus

This is your fault. Can you expect me to pine after you when we never met? No, foolish... You've stirred the waters, and I no longer see my reflection. But when the mud settles, again I'll see this face, again I'll ask all the painful questions. Did you save me. hurt me, ask me bitter questions, salt my open wounds? I'm invincible, invincible in my isolation. Not your fault, not mine. But I've realized the rivers eternal only slide though and past me, and I cannot alter the course.

So, goodbye, goodbye, fly free, in the chrysalis I built for me.
And when your butterflying high, I'll watch my love soar free and die.
Icarus, your sin is mine.
I flew in pride too high, too high, and the sun I loved set my wings afire,
chastised do I fall.

Regression

I was having a similar experience as yesterday until the just this evening: so many hurting friends, and nothing I seem capable of doing that helps. I'm going to steal his words, and hope he'll forgive me, for he succinctly stated what was stampeding across my feelings yesterday:
To those of you in pain and darkness (you know who you are), I just wanted to remind you of my love and care for you. If I could, I'd take us all away to some island with fresh fruit and clean waters where it is always sunny, and we could all rest and recover. For now, just remember that you are not alone.
~CB

Yesterday, I dreamed of a regression of time, where each of those I loved was losing years, dragged backwards in lifespan. I've never studied dream interpretations myself, though I find them an interesting insight into our psyche. Often times, we encode cultural symbology into our subconscious, and our dreams dredge them up in fascinating ways. What could regression of time mean? Often times it entails a pulling back, a retreating into self and a new start. It is like a self-autumn and winter, a crinkling, collapsing, dying, and hopeful rebirth - a metamorphosis.  I'm collapsing into myself like a caterpillar, praying that my next instance, I gain some wings.
The idea with the theme of regression is this concept of losing the current, losing the present and future. It's as if everything and everyone is leaving you behind, and you regress into yourself in a defensive gesture, and prepare for blooming a second time.

Spider imagery tends to indicate danger and manipulation. I'm not certain what my self-conscious implies here, but I suspect I wouldn't explain it if I knew.

The incorrect labels. I believe this is subconscious indication that I am looking at things incorrectly, that my perception of details in some aspects is wrong. The fact that the labels were placed there by opposing forces, invasive forces, indicates that I feel manipulated or deceived in some fashion. Also, the fact that I understand that these labels, stickers, signs on the trees are misguiding me represents that, maybe, I've always known they were incorrect, but allowed myself to be swayed. Interesting. Not a dream telling of my greatest days.

Garden themes: I had to look this one up, and I did look up the other ones as well because I find the study of dreams interesting, if sometimes suspicious. I sometimes despise such easy entries into my psyche. But here I am, prying these thoughts open and dissecting and classifying each one, giving my subconscious an identity. For garden, contains a sense of diligence. It's a dream and an actuation of belief, a realization of faith. The garden in my dreams was not defined, and could also imply a continued effort, a need to continue in care-taking, weeding, nurturing.

City

I'm a country child. I was born with a backyard, a garden, a large maple tree and a collection of birch trees, and all the space for running around an energetic boy needs. Eventually, we moved across the country, from mid-west chills and humid heats into precipitation and less cloying heat. We lived in a crazy house with an epic backyard, my favorite backyard of all time. We had a deck on stilts with stairs leading onto a hill that sloped down towards a creek. Then the backyard sloped steeply up towards a rickety wooden fence with planks missing (perfect for scampering out of the backyard as a shortcut to the high school soccer fields) The tiny creek was a boy's wonder: frogs, tiny waterfalls, chemical-orange colors, fizzing waters, eddies, salamanders, the smallest of fish, water-skippers. Because of the steep slope, my parents gardened in terraces, and my father built a series of descending levels on the sunlit side of the backyard. Much of the backyard was shaded by towering pines.
When I was twelve or so, we moved again, to my parent's current residence. The backyard is a forest and a creek meanders through there as well, though getting to it proves a worthy task (we were more stubborn than the brambles - we made paths). I've never lived in the city, in an actual city. I think there is something frightening about cities, and fascinating. The magnitude, the intoxicating and muddled scents that assault the senses, and the claustrophobic and unnatural meshed with the communal and industriousness. It is an ant colony with every ant its own queen, and other queens besides: queens of business, queens of religion and culture, queens of media and industry, queens of monetary value across the spectrum, and queens for each district and home.  How do you make sense of this chaos?
This is what today has been. A city. Friends suffering from hurts, panic, stress, fights, busyness, married life as introverts, changes of churches, difficult work partners, sickness, more sickness, tough job situations, shortages of money, frustrated bosses, hospital visits from fear, anger, frustration, impatience. I woke today and expected a day off, a day of peace, and I received a sensory overload of emotional angst from each friend I visited today, and worse things. It's like visiting a city and encountering a wall of smog that irritates your eyes and burns at your nostrils until you cry. You want to fix the industrial waste flooding the city, want to give life to the trees, blue to the sky and waters, vigor to the zombie-ant-workers shambling down the streets. A tsunami of hurt, and I felt dissected from it, as though I could not pierce the wall and help, only watch as an outsider.
When my friends hurt, I get nauseous. This is most particularly involving fights. When people fight, and my friends are hurt (emotionally, spiritually, physically etc) in the process - whether I am witness or not - my gut gorges on a city of its own, a city of chaos and visceral turmoil. I almost feel physically ill if the anguish is enough, and just lie in my bed praying. I have not felt so for a long time. But tonight, as friends suffer without sabbath at the mercy of endless bleeding days - does it come tonight? Will I sleep, or lay awake and stare at the window, listening to the thoughtless slapping of drops against the glass and screen.
And finally, just finally, the compelling news of the finish line, broken and reddened against the asphalt. I drew this, I think, and I knew this ended here. Too many things, too fast. I wanted one chance, I wanted to help. Is there any possible arc of time where winning was even a remote possibility?
What a night.


From space, the cities are stars, speckling the globe as candles. All these fireflies, street strobe lights -what stories these constellations? A global bioluminescence, transforming this marine world into a glowing jack-o'-lantern, an incensed thurible, a disco ball, spinning and dancing around the sun. I dreamed, last night, of a regression of time. That was my original topic.  These were the notes I wrote at 5 in the morning when I awakened from the dream:
dream: going back in time - everyone is going back in time
elms are labeled (even though they are maples)
tell dad to remind me of a quote I said: apparently my journals traveled through time?
(find the black spider of time)

Time to drink chamomile tea, curl up beneath the blankets, open the window, light a candle, read a book, and drink in the serenity of the world when everyone has retreated into themselves.


I was back home, the luscious greens of summer still wreathing the yard.  The garden clambered up the fences and sprawled across the walkways. But strangers had invaded our yard and placed stickers on everything, weird giant labels on trees, bushes, grass, garden, house, and somehow even the sky - even the clouds were labeled. I glanced at the giant maples towering over the yard, and the giant label read: "elm" in atrocious yellow and black. It was not an elm, it wasn't, it wasn't, I heard voices shouting inside my head. But I could not argue with the strangers - the label transformed the tree into an elm, and the beloved tree was a maple no more.
I didn't want an elm, I wanted a maple. Father came and walked around the yard with me, glancing at each peculiar sticker. Sam came running outside, and we knew something was wrong. He was getting younger. Somehow, we knew that each day, he was losing a year his life. Tomorrow, he would not remember this year, would have lost a year of his life. What would happen when he reached birth? We tried, each following day, to remind him of this, but it worried him so, and we gave up. Soon, he disappeared. Then I started getting younger. I could not stop the regression of time. I wrote things in my journal so that the next day I might remember them, but I forgot about my journal the following day. I thought up a crafty and hopeful phrase, and told my father to always remind me of it, each day until I was no more. I cannot remember the phrase now. It was a blessing, a faith, and a hope where none existed.
We found out, when I was but 10 years old, that a black spider was causing the time regression. My parents, too, now regressed in time. Every day, they lost years, and we only knew through the keeping of journals. We searched and searched, but could not find the black spider that was destroying us. I woke before I was undone, though I remember my parents getting younger faster and faster, almost surpassing me. A frightening vision into my psyche, I suspect, though I awakened with wonder. I remembered thinking that God had given me a phrase to keep me, even in the times where everything appeared inexorably in decline. I almost remember the phrase, the one I implored my father remind me of each day, but come morning I just could not quite recall it.

Where are you going?

It's a question I hear a lot lately, whether internally or from concerned friends. Not that my life's direction appears disastrous, but due to the uncertainty found in a definitive lack of roommates in the upcoming year. Will I stay in Oregon? Will I retreat into Washington, or explore the world, or find new roommates, or buy a house? Just because everyone will be married does not mean my friends have removed themselves from my life, nor I from theirs. But my location is in question.
Still, the quietude, an ambiance not unfamiliar, is daunting, frightful. Part of me greatly desires living alone, knowing that I might accomplish much on silent nights. Another part of me understands that it may destroy me. Where am I going? Where do I go?
I think these questions assault me on these nights with a chill and empty sky, covered with blank clouds, when no one is home and the house is full of dead noise and electronic burrs. Once, twice a week, when silence sounds the gongs inside the wasteland.

I'd live in a log cabin if I could, in a forest by a stream. I'd live in a tiny house with a loft, skylight singing in the rain. I'd live in an abbey on a mountain, a cloister on the river bend, a yurt in the forest, a homestead in the hills. I just want to be with those I love, I guess. For now, that's here I think. Though I would like to see the rest of the world. I suppose I even have the means.