connoisseurs of light

evil? is it 

the opposite of 

feeling alive? yeah, 

he's friendly, but 

seeking permission 

to pet instead 

of just petting is 

good practice for 

learning how to get 

consent. she 

reclines in 

the shade of 

a beautiful autumn 

morning, mirrored 

in her silver sun-

glasses sparkling, 

a hint of crisp 

amid summer's last 

gasp. does 

nostalgia 

depend on 

kindness, or 

kindness 

nostalgia? 

both are warm 

& fuzzy blankets. 

the barista dangles 

chilled notes from the ceiling 
just to make sure we know 
its cool in here. 

diagnosis means 
to know apart from. 
alleviating suffering 

begins with giving 

affliction a name, 

the surgeon said, 

but what if life 

is your affliction? 

floating  

until we become too 
heavy 
to float. 

a tall young man 

exits wearing 

a chalk white skeleton 

on his black tshirt 

didn't we used to 

celebrate the seasons 

& our connection to 

nature and now 

we celebrate money. 

why do we need so much 

sweetness and what 

is so bitter about our lies

that we have to hide the taste 

with sugar & shine? 

as if having filled. 

we should know by now 

as cars rush past. black 

clad ladies tilting tables 

upright onto their 

bright white legs as 

a young man skates 

lazy figure eights 

down my neighborhood's 

gently sloping hill. 

before me a young woman 

sits down at a sidewalk table. 

in one arm, glistening with 

fresh ink, she holds 

the leash to a caramel 

coated mother who 

watches & waits 

for her treat. the trees, 

those connoisseurs of light,

have begun to change.  

the trees know.

right on time

running late for the bus
running and missing it
but not missing this sun-
light so delicate. i love
how it hangs there like
crepe paper half-heartedly
hung for a party we're too
tired to clean up for. 
i waited inside this 
clear plastic can, empty of
everything but the traces
of its function. of course,
the next bus was late as we
maintained our proper 
spacing on this 
glowing court. 

someone who was there 
wanted you to know.
someone who was there
will never know. 
and someone who was there
had all the time in the world
to catch the light.

standing in the line of thought

                                                                                                                                                                          
if judgments were visible we would flee our rooms for fear of fire, resting a palm or a cheek against the wall, feeling for heat before falling to the floor, so we can breathe just below where the hatred floats, humbled away on hands & knees. 

burn your notebooks and listen to the rest of your body.

cities are sets where we stage our dreams and nightmares. most of us too poor or weighed down with debt. what we owe submerges us, keeps us flailing in slow motion beneath the waves. 

how can you ever be anyone else and never leave?

i know what i am a few incidents away from losing, but wasn't i always a few incidents away from gaining something as well? how often are you just a few incidents away from love?

catastrophe forces us to choose all over again, to organize what's alive. faced with such cliffs, we always exclaim, "what have i done!" instead of asking, "what have i chosen?"

i feel like a bus driver who always drives the same route.

versions of ourselves, both newer & worn too well, breaking & already broken, pass like a melody played on an instrument you do not touch, through rooms of old wood, in a house that survives from a previous era of the place you live and falsely feel yourself at home in. 

standing in the line of thought
it's not enough to drop what you have
you must untie the knot

images from http://www.placehacking.co.uk/tag/caves/

there will be no purple rain

standing in line at the plaid, tall dough boy who i usually see behind the cash register is headed out the door, skateboard slung over his shoulder, nods as he walks by, we exchange muttered dudes. the fluorescent light is bright, the linoleum floor is white. i recognize the song. 

I never meant to cause you any sorrow. 

I never meant to cause you any pain. 

I only wanna one time see you laughing. 

I only wanna to hear you... 

inside, i start to sing along. usually the wait is interminable, a mockery of the slogan: 

GET IN

GET IT

GET GOING

but tonite i have a song i haven't heard in ages. but just as i start to groove, the cashier reaches over and skips the track. this is the plaid, so all hopes & dreams must die. suddenly, a guy who had just checked out and was walking away stops, turns & juts his face into the middle of the transaction. 

you turning off purple rain?

the cashier is surprised. he obviously hasn't fully considered the consequences of that decision. 

uh, yeah he stammers, confused. 

the man just stands there, shaking his head. he is middle-aged like me but wears his years worse. his hair & beard are thoroughly salted. his face is a slab of pink, tenderized meat. 

you turning off purple rain?

he says it again, his tone lands somewhere in between a question & an emphatic statement of disbelief. he turns and skulks out the door, yet another thing a working man can't have. 

and the cashier, who never meant to cause him any sorrow, who never meant to cause him any pain, moves on. 

next transaction,

next song. 

quote from "The End of Night" by Paul Bogard

"you can't help but feel that tingle of fear, that fear of the unknown, that mystery. you like the feel of bare feet on warm desert rocks, the unexpected scent of night-blooming rose. you lie on your back with your hands across your eyes like blinders, making the world that much darker, then open them to reveal the sky. you do this again & again, and each time the sky is a little brighter, each time more peppered with stars. you stand & open your arms, savoring this window of darkness between the end of twilight & the waning moon's rise. you feel the breeze on your skin & in your hair, hear the sounds from the canyon of crickets & crows and the steady throb of some creature unknown; you feel utterly surrounded by natural night, by fellow creatures for whom this is home, none of whom care if you're here as long as you don't bother them, all of whom lend their voice to the song this night sings, saying wel-come wel-come wel-come, belong."

all of us had everything

all of us had everything-

we are trying 

to make 

what we lost...

solastalgia

i had a conversation recently with a coworker my own age about portland in the eighties & nineties and how amazing it was to check out up coming bands at satyricon. i think we were talking about the KEEP PORTLAND WEIRD stickers. he thought portland was more genuinely weird back then. i've never really understood the keep portland weird thing as it seems to me if you have try to keep it weird it probably isn't really weird and selling bumper stickers about it really isn't weird either. maybe i just don't like how vague the term is. my coworker seemed to interpret it as when portland was much more working class and much less developed. i told him about walking home from laurelhurst theater one night and noticing all these new shops & restaurants, etc. i sometimes feel like it's very negative to criticize such places for existing, as if everything new is bad & everything old is good, for i believe that the nostalgia people have for the past tends to gloss over or even completely deny that not everything was so wonderful back then. our memories can be too convenient for the narratives we want to construct, both for ourselves & others. i thought most of the shops & restaurants looked much more interesting than the drab places they replaced, but i also felt some sense of anxiety & distance from them too. i realized that i feel kind of alienated from so many of the new places because they represent a certain kind of opportunity that i'm either indifferent to or simply can't participate in very much, if at all, which is offering new & interesting ways to spend money. at a certain distance, it's nice that such options exist, and i'm definitely not poor, but i don't really like shopping in the first place and i don't have much extra money to spend anyway. unfortunately, my wages have increased very slowly while everything around me seems to be increasing much more rapidly, which i think is the source of my anxiety about being able to live here long term. i should have realized this before i moved back as i did some research in a book called "Cities Ranked & Rated" which showed that portland was the most affordable decent sized & decent quality city to live in on the west coast. i think everyone else, thanks in part to portlandia, is discovering this as well. that's nothing new necessarily but we may have reached a tipping point where there is enough of interest for the affluent to move here, unlike in the past when it was a much more blue collar town. my coworker said he doesn't like the city portland is becoming and liked what it used to be much more. the funny thing about cities is that they seem so solid but are continuously being rebuilt. it's like a ride you get on thinking it's going to be one thing but might change radically once you are on, or it might not. and because it's so large & populated, it seems like there are very limited options if you don't like how it's changing, especially for the working class. i feel like you're really living at the mercy of whatever trajectory this vast artificial island is evolving toward. for me, this is an argument for intentional community, or at least, living in a village, though those also have their limitations & issues. all of this reminds me of my workplace, a business that has been around for over forty years now and which has a surprising number of people who have worked there for twenty years or more. some of them are very bitter & upset about how the business has changed over years, but what i am often struck by is the sense of outrage that it keeps changing at all, as if they expected both the city & the place where they work to remain exactly as they were when they first encountered them. to me it's amazing that there are still people out there who have had the same job at the same place for over twenty years as i cannot even imagine all the places that have come & gone over the years. i guess it's easy for me to wax philosophical about it as i am treading water with the changes so far, both at work & at large, or so i think. but it's quite different, i suspect, when you start going under more & more frequently, and even more so when you realize that you are getting old and may never tread water in this place you have lived & worked in, and that, even though you never left, somehow everything is gone.