A didactic poem (to teach)

I welcome sleep with sounds of thunder
Finally, like going under a bridge
of seconds, sevenths, and roiling water
Leading to visions of chthonic marauders

Here, tonight, an image lost
when I open my eyes, but still, I crossed
that bridge, at least for a time
and found again

A place that lives behind facades,
with no concession for lies or mirage,
that only exists on thunderous nights,
where phantoms scurry to the edge of the light,

and directions are posted on signs, but might
not direct you in the way you expect,
but lead you to where your actions go
not to your thoughts, or intentions,
so

There can be no deception between in or out.
Unwilful obeying is still, then, to flout.
There can be no deception between out or in.
A sin rationalized is twice a sin.

What journey I traveled while lying still
has faded most, but left me to tell:

Do not go where you are beckoned
If only to appease the beckoner
As if it had any need of you;
as it to reckon were for the reckoner.

Shantih, shantih, shantih...peace, peace, peace. Peace.
New York City, where is your horizon?

The best view of the city is from roofs.
Watching people kiss on fire escapes
The horizon, a jagged, broken, line.

There is broken glass all over Brooklyn
Like something once whole was dropped to the ground

Above ground, buildings rise up like giants
Trying to get their own piece of the sky
Spreading wings like shadows across the ground

Across town, people live high up, up enough
Not to see the ground, but to see the sunrise

Below ground, people squirm, and crawl, like worms
Trying to get their own piece of the earth.
Shantih, shantih, shantih. Peace, peace, peace....peace.

Two tritinas

I.
We fall asleep in a bath of orange
street lamp. The curtains never fully close.
all our windows are made of broken glass

at night we try to sleep, but when we close
our eyes, we still see images of glass
menageries, and windows, and orange

spice tea, with nutmeg, served in a wine glass
reflecting back the lamp, glass, and orange
bath, through eyelids which never fully close.

II.
Shine, then break, then dispersing, inverted
suspended like gems in midair, midair
fragments, blue and undulating diamonds

drift slowly upward, then become air
these, stars that fell from night, like diamonds
If the earth and sea itself inverted

These airy, these broken, these starry diamonds
fallen from grace, our bodies inverted
break and scatter, if you come up for air

20 Edgerton Street

Holly and I finally found an apartment. It was perfect. It had hardwood floors and high ceilings, window seats, a clawfoot tub, a porch, and huge rooms, the living/dining room even being big enough for my spinet piano. The kitchen was tiny, though, which everyone commented on. Personally, I liked its exact symmetry with the bathroom. I thought it was economical, and indicative of how bodies should be. Holly said we’d learn to cook anyway and have big Sunday dinners, but we didn’t.

Despite how fucking cool the apartment was, I was still a little nervous about getting my own place, especially when I thought about things like Vaporub. Was I supposed to just go out and get some, to have it on hand for when I needed it? Or would Holly go get it for me if I was congested? Is Vaporub still around? Is it expensive? Does it even work?

We moved in in the beginning of October. I wanted my bedroom to look how Shpongle sounded. I put the Klipshes in first and turned the bass up, then nailed swaths of African batik around the walls. My bed had a purple Mexican afghan for a comforter and jutted out diagonally from the corner, and a red star lamp hanging above it. I lit incense and candles and put plants on the window seats.

I was fixated on the idea that I would stop being nervous once the piano settled into its place in our giant living room. My friend Kristin and I had been using my parents’ minivan to cart stuff over, so the piano was still at their place. The plan was to just wait for them to come home, when they said they’d help with it, but that was two weeks away. It became imperative that I get the piano before then. I did some research while sitting at my horrifically boring desk job: piano movers are expensive.

As happens sometimes, I wasn’t able to concentrate on anything except getting the piano before my parents came home. I inventoried, and these were the things at my disposal: about fifty dollars, Kristin, Holly (sporadically), my parents’ minivan, and the phone number of Tom, a fellow coworker, who was a very nice and very large man who had offered the services of himself and his truck, Sylvia, for any moving needs I might have.

Feeling desperate one boring day at my desk I started texting all the guys I knew. Could you help me move a piano? I have one guy, myself, two females, and a truck. And beer. Thanks. A few people wrote back saying they’d be glad to help. I confirmed with Tom. It was all set for that weekend, moving the piano. One by one, everyone but Tom and Holly backed out. But so it was set: the three of us would drive Sylvia from Edgerton Street out to the boondocks I used to call home, collect the piano, and bring it back. Then I could relax.
When Tom saw the piano, he said, ‘Wait. This is what you want me to move?’
My heart sank. ‘Well, yeah. We talked about this, remember? It’s a piano.’ I didn’t mean to be rude, but I needed to move that piano.

Tom was dubious. Holly was tiny. ‘I can help,’ she said redundantly. ‘We’ll try,’ said Tom. We all bent down and tried to push the piano toward the door. It moved about an inch, which was a bad sign, because it was on wheels. ‘I don’t know about this,’ said Tom.

‘One more try,’ I said. We tried again.

I felt horrible, both for myself and for bringing Tom and Sylvia out here, an hour roundtrip, for no reason. To save face I invented some other possessions I needed from the house. I felt like crying.

The ride back was awkward, because I was depressed, and Holly kept saying things like ‘I don’t know why you thought we could lift a piano, anyway,’ which made me hate her. Tom was nice about it.

I lay in my diagonal Shpongle bed that night, wondering if I had made the right decision. Was it a good idea to move in to my own place, which, granted, was only $375 a month, but when I could be saving that money by living at home, where there was already Vaporub and a piano? Sure, I wouldn’t have as much freedom, but I was twenty one; my parents couldn’t be that overbearing. Was that worth $375 a month? I had no idea at the time how monstrously cheap that was; it seemed like a dizzying splurge, and I felt overwhelmed with my own selfishness.

Oh well. At home I didn't have a Shpongle room, I thought, as I stared up at the chiffon draped under the ceiling light and listened to ‘Tales of the Inexpressible.’ Nor could I play piano at all hours of the night, which I was sure I would do here, as soon as I possibly could. I had never done that before, stayed up till morning writing and practicing songs, but I was confident I would here on Edgerton Street.

In the end I had to wait till my parents got home. They hired movers for me as a birthday present, and we got the piano into its place in the glorious living room without a hitch. I tried to give Tom a six pack of Yuengling for helping me but it turned out he doesn’t drink.

Two men walked down a prison corridor, when another man in plain clothes approached and walked with them. They knew he was an undercover cop, so they ignored all his provocations. At the end of the hallway they still had not given in, so the cop turned and arrested one of them. A scuffle ensued, and in the chaos one of the men began calling the cop by the accused man's name, thus incriminating him. The crowd caught on, having no way to identify the cop, and having the two men's word against one. Correctional officers arrived and arrested the cop in the other man's name, and he was sentenced to life in prison.

Five years later, "Any inconsistency in your story only serves to weaken your case and confuse the jury," said a voice that was clearly well-versed in court proceedings. The cop's cell door closed, and the speaker turned out to be the man who had originally caused the mix-up. He had become a police officer, and now was in a place of power over the unfortunate cop. Outside the cell in the hallway, he burst into tears.

Didn't anyone notice that one man was black and the other white? Should anyone who did, speak up, or risk spending their own life behind bars?

As I drove home from work after class I thought about how if I were to slide between dimensions, possibly by dying, presumably my senses would be the first thing to go. If that’s true, though, it seems odd that I think of art as transcendent, as in, able to reach other planes of reality. Maybe art is the senses’ approach to finding truth, not truth itself. If that’s true, and even the best art disappears when our senses dissolve, the truth that it was pointing toward might remain, because truth is not contingent on your perception.

The other thing I thought before I turned onto my street was that that means you can’t hang onto pieces of art as you transition, like you can’t hang onto coins you earn from level to the next in a video game. When you ‘graduate’ or shift or slide to another level or dimension, while it would be wonderful to be able to carry something with you, like your favorite book or melody, in all likelihood you can’t. Art is transient, and because it is dependent on the senses, it cannot survive the transition. So you better hope that your understanding of it is strong enough to, because that might be all you get.

I turned this in to my philosophy professor as a response to the reading we were supposed to do on David Hume. I didn’t read it, so I don’t know how relevant my input was, but I was banking on him being sufficiently moved to give me an A anyway.

‘The paper was supposed to be ten pages long,’ he said, staring at my measly one page on his desk during office hours the next day. He frowned at it through it his enormous glasses. ‘And on the fallacies in Hume’s critique of the argument from design.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, truly remorseful.

‘However, I’m willing to make an exception,’ he went on, ‘If you can parse out what you handed in to me into a valid argument, by Monday, I’ll accept it.’ He steepled his fingers under his chin.

As I closed the door behind me I heard him mutter ‘And please read the critique.’

This was excellent news. I now had the choice between two papers to write, which meant one must be worth doing. Having only till Friday, I sat down that night with every intention to complete at least one.

The Five Burroughs

You know how when you remember part of your childhood, or something that happened a long time ago, the parts of that memory all seem to bleed together, as if they weren't discrete sections that you experienced separately, but one big mix of stuff? (Do other people feel that way?)

I love that feeling, and I think I try to dive into it when I write something.

Last night Johnny told us a good name for a band he'd thought of: The Five Burroughs. (As in, spelled like William S. Burroughs.) I said it sounded like a punk band, and he said he'd probably never change his band name from Secret Cove, so it didn't matter anyway, and I said he could use it in the book he's writing. That is another thing I love about writing: if you think of something awesome that you won't do, but might have done in another life, then you can imagine the world you'd want it to happen in, and create it.

Someday, looking back, my whole life will be a big amorphous flowing memory of all the things I did - maybe, far enough away, I won't remember whether I lived in NYC before South Bend, or if I went to Ghana or only imagined going to Ghana. And I think that in that mix will be all the things I wrote about. Maybe they'll even be as real as things that really happened. So for that reason, I owe it to myself to right great things, and to write a lot of them, and to write them well.