I'm Not Here

November 14^th, 2009

But I’m not there either.

Not dancing out in Spaceland

Not traversing the trails near home

Not assisting films

Not studying rocks

Not swimming like when I was young

Nor running on Payne’s legacy

Nor having pizza after church on a Saturday night

Nor biking with my mom

Nor volunteering at a nursing home

Nor leading a film club

Nor exploring another country

Nor marrying

Nor loving life.

I compute

I type

I stare

I feed cats

I avoid conflict

I avoid love?

I eat

I sleep

I lie,

waiting.

For what?

Chapters flown past.

Other stories progress where mine ended,

And others that might have joined are given away.

Stuck in the blank pages between Parts 3 and 4.

Blank.

Turning to progress

I find nothing but notes for future chapters Sixteen,

Twenty,

And Twenty-three.

Where is the writer?

Has he not been paid?

Hadn’t he ample ink? Time Enough?

Encouragement from his publisher and peers?

The presses stand cold.

Waiting for the lever to be thrown,

But a spark to begin the long night’s printing.

Will the pen be lifted in inspiration before it’s too late to make tomorrow’s edition?

The Vote

March 23^rd, 2009

The beach gives way to the ocean,

Where am I but lost at sea?

Left to drift in a home on the front lines

No sitting down

Constant warfare

Its breath has been taken

Suffocation to the resistance

Ultimate totalitarianism

One hand by the force of many

Democratic suicide

To an aquatic destruction

Did we not welcome it too?

Like the sand in recline

Led by hot air from ballots

Control signed away by the leasers

Who thought themselves the owners.

Winter

January 15^th, 2010

Winter brings yonder near

By clearing leaves from branches.

From the ground to the sky

From the sun to his eye

A man sees his soul, and reaches.

DuPont

January 7^th, 2010

A land of cascades

One to another

Here and there

Down and down

Ever it drops to rise.

Paths white as snow

Turned dull as dust.

In this place many go

And most return.

Beyond the white water

a frozen forest broods.

Snowed on are its trails

Snowed out are its travelers.

Ice hisses out its cousin, water,

underfoot in a puddle.

Slip do feet on glazen white carpet.

Wood duck soar

Tree to high tree.

Bells on the ground

Sound tiny leaves

Going down

for a long wait to rise

In form changed.

Reincarnation

as an atom in a fir

a molecule in a pine.

In this place few go

And less of one returns.

A Bud is Born

January 3^rd, 2010

While life in one part of the nation was certain and confined, one place offered hope. The American West is many things, and for early Americans it was the unknown, adventure, and dreams. Later, it would promise more eastern Americans hope for riches of metal born from rock by water to iron sieving pans into the pockets of peasant’s pants to their deliverance into their capable dreams, free from the finite power of their hands and heritage.

For me the West offered as much, but without the need of deliverance. It promised a new life; not from one forlorn, but built upon—one was succeeded by the former as a change in season. It left me not disappointed and destitute as it did many seeking riches but rather with a life that had come into its own—and it came quickly in regard to its social and personal being. The dream sought for and promised never materialized even through great toil and perseverance. In spite of this, life was entertained by the generosity of my family, to a point. Because of this, I left to seek an old calling in a new avenue. The dream was shattered like so many others of the 1870s except that my heart didn’t die with the burned dream; it smolders in sweet surrealism.

This second life has been the opposite of the first. While riches are now regularly deposited, life has been void. A house in the middle of no where—yet still in the city limits; a roommate who is both friend and foe; a car that must be driven for the most basic necessities by lack of public transportation; with the roommate’s sudden departure and divorce, a loneliness filled only by pets; separation from happening; a list of friends that stops at two; aimlessness and lack of physical fitness; lack of volunteering and religious community. I thought this life would bloom by December. Instead it started ill and remained stagnated—until now. The bud is born and the promise of the bloom is close to actualization. Let this bud last and come into its color.

Others’ dreams have gone on to bear fruit on the eve of my departure in a way only meant to say--ever so politely--it was not meant to be. By them may I some day return to the West with that same dream on a sturdier wagon and trail? Or perhaps in a rush of another kind?