Some Saturday, 12th Grade

Hey mom,  sorry for not calling earlier

I'll be home late, after curfew actually.

I'm drinking heavily and won't remember

leaving this message tomorrow I'm sure.

I'm about to go out with people I don't really know

to a party at a house I've never been to

and don't know the address of

and the driver has only had five or six beers

so he's fine.  We'll all be fine.

We're in the car smoking marijuana

that we bought from some dudes

who went to the city recently.

They said it was the best of Mexico

and the ecstasy is 95 percent pure

so not much risk there

but I feel hot, on my skin,

and my mind cannot be distinguished

from any other thing.  I wonder if I'm here

if I'm alive but I'm okay

it's just philosophy.

Love you forever.

Sorry for the long message.

Okay love you.  See you tomorrow.

Bye.

Samsara, Impermanence, and the Will of Love

Always self-identified as a Buddhist
and so believed that escaping from the cycle
of suffering that is Life was it. That was the goal.
But I've met you now and am confused
like I was before I met the Buddha.
I now think, well, if you're coming back
then I'm coming back, too.
Again and again I'll come back with you.

And I have this poem I read back in high school
getting all jumbled up with my own ending here
and it goes like,
I have many lives to live before I leave.
And I have many lives to live before I leave.

Amidst folly and war and laughter and risk
there is togetherness.
We decide if it is permanent.
And if we decide that it is,
then it is, isn't it?

hold your tongue

You might have ten thousand clever responses. 
It is heartbreaking when you realize that
keeping your mouth shut is the best of them.

I am an artist.

I used to say it with pride.  Maybe too much pride.  But, whatever.  I now say it as a statement of fact: I am an artist.  It is something that I have learned about myself over the years.  

Whether you know it or not, I am an artist. Whether anyone in the world pays me for my art or not, I am an artist.  Whether I am or am not introduced as a poet who writes music and plays a little guitar and even has a few paintings and drawings, I am an artist.  I am that poet.  Heck, in my mind, I am also that poem, that song, those paintings and drawings.  I am those things, too.

Whether I tell you or not; whether you see it in my eyes or can tell after a little while or not; whether you believe it, acknowledge me as such or not, guess what?

That's totally cool.  It's not on you to tell me who or what I am, or to care.  But, I'm just saying, because it finally sunk in and feels kind of good: I'm an artist.

I'm an artist, I'm an artist.  

It's fucking beautiful, I'm gonna go write a song about it.

meu lar no futuro

Eu, no meio de um campo
numa casa rodeada por
coisas verdes, montanhas

um forno à lenha
café e pão integral que compro
da avó do Zé
porque o dela é o melhor
que eu já experimentei na minha vida.

Tudo tem que ficar
no alcance da internet
ou, seja o que for quando chegar
neste futuro.

As vezes, vinho,
visitantes, amantes
deitados na escuridão
especulando sobre a possibilidade
de vida lá no além,
nosso lugar no universo,
perguntas sem respostas
uma desculpa para conversar até o sol nascer.

O vácuo meu teto
brilhando com dúvidas
e propósitos
todos dos quais morrerão

está tudo bem
pois, é meu lar,
meu próprio lar.

It Has Been Raining for Days

Headrocked.
Spirit stoned off the gray sky
rain rain rain.

I don't want to take that next step
toward the solution
to my laziness today.

I will stare out the window
and imagine I am a monk....

But the shit that needs to be done
is like the gnat that needs to be killed
in order for you to be able to sleep fearlessly
and not wake up with an itchy hand
cheek or eyebrow.

Vacation isn't a vacation when you have to organize
organize organize everything.
When long plane rides are involved.
Layovers. Adjusting to different time zones.

My body is a shell
and somewhere in there is
atman, I, One
the place from which each of my fibers
emanate
the place from which divisions
and groups divide and group
and things become things
until the entire cycle
envelops the imagination,
surpasses the mind that intuits it
and becomes entirely unintelligible
but somehow knowable
at the same time.

Get back to work.

10.6.2011

Writing, at this moment, is a meditation.  It has no rules regarding clarity, form, or the structure I've learned (and, God willing, teach, one day).  Structure is not bad, but it contributes to a specific type of purpose, which is, in part, clarity, which, as I've already mentioned, is not a goal presently.  The goal is relaxation, release, the large balloon floating toward a vista I cannot see but can believe I imagine, there is where whatever is there will be as sheets, full, feathered, soft, and perfect, will cover me. 

My power is not what is written or how, but what is infused in each word and what is between each word.  The words are places for sounds to fill absence and make space seem knowable.  It is not.  It is imaginable.  It is describable, to a degree, to a limited and wonderfully reflective degree, where honesty is.

Silence is an art woven here.  Syllables are a craft, the stones, the filling of space for form and purpose.  They are left and remain, outliving the hearts, hands and lone spread-wide toes, bare because it was so long ago that we began to walk on our own land.

I am not smart.  Not as smart as I sometimes think.  But belief, there is something to it.  It shan't be abused nor carted about in excess so long as you follow rules.  Rules are secondary.  They have not crafted, they are crafted.

They shape not man as in his form to the eye but the proportions desirable, which change.

They shape man in the same way that words shape the silence in the mind of a reader, laying tracks for the thinker to get from one thought to another where, perhaps, she has not yet visited despite being there, well within the reach of her understanding.  Not that it is useful to know anything that cannot be used in the future, but to walk around, to wander, even without a destination in mind is said to do wonders for, if nothing else, one's health.