No! Not to me... You can't do this... We have a contract!!

"Andrew Dies Alone" (2011)

The car.
The lights.
The road.
The turn.
The sound.
The silence.
Black.
Numb.
Lying under spent metal and a spinning wheel, Andrew’s brain flails, sending a desperate signal to his legs that never quite makes it. The realization doesn’t come to him just yet; he’s still reeling from the impact. His head is pounding hard. A dark fluid makes its way down his cheek. He shuts his eyes but he sees stars anyway. He tries to grit his teeth and move the vehicle just enough to crawl out from under it, but even his arms aren’t responding. The wheel stops spinning, slowly and carefully, as if not to disturb the tragedy playing out before it.

Andrew’s eyes open, wet and puffy. The tears come, but they are without the burning sensation he is familiar with. There is no feeling of release. Andrew can see that he is in pain but he can feel none of it. The rain starts. The water is just inconvenient at this point. He wants to fight, he wants to live, but the ditch is taking on water. The street is cold and dark and empty. He took the road less traveled and is dying beside it. The irony is literally killing him. He wants to laugh but he isn’t sure if it would be appropriate. Maybe he should respect his own demise.

The dark of the surrounding woodlands is oppressive, the kind of dark you only see when you’re going to die. The crunch of the fall leaves under him gives way to the even shush of the rainstorm. The rain hushes him like a comforting mother with a cloth pressed against his lips to smother him quietly. The water rises beneath him, but it cannot lift the car. He’s still pinned beneath the weight of his own salary. He isn’t anywhere near paying it off yet. The debt is almost as crushing as the metal itself. His jeans are dark in the pool of water carrying itself up his body. He hates this slow death.

Andrew always pictured his own death as a pleasant farewell in a hospital bed with friends and family surrounding him. Now, even the fauna have scurried off and abandoned him. Nobody knows where he is. He isn’t expected to come home for days. He has effectively been forgotten. He turns his head to avoid drowning in the rainfall, but his lips suck up mud and dirt instead. Even the worms have burrowed deep underground. Even the soil seems like it wants to move away from him. The world is slowly seceding from his grim, private reality…the water climbs higher and higher…he feels nothing…no lightening, just the faint glow of the moon overhead to spotlight him in his final moments.

Andrew dies alone.

Don't worry, it's not about you.

This is just how I cope. Poetry helps me get elbow deep into my emotions and encourages me to deconstruct my own feelings on whatever matter is bothering me at the time. Bothering is a bit of an exaggeration here, though. I'm not upset or sad or irked about anything. I'm just lonely. And loneliness has a way of rationalizing itself in the most negative ways possible.

Who knows, maybe it's just the weather.

Anyways, I'd like to mention that this is actually written as a song. The tune, which I have bouncing around in my head at the moment, is reminiscent of the kind of writing Swedish folk singer The Tallest Man on Earth specializes in. Maybe he'll sing it for me one day.
---

“The Wait Is Over” (2011)

Simple enough.
The brown-eyed beauty and the boys running off.
Simple enough, simple enough.

I waited by the window,
Sitting on my hands; don’t make a scene.
Just you keep your thoughts away; don’t make a scene.

Mama’s gonna catch you,
With your hands all over her; don’t make a scene.
If you know what’s good for you, don’t make a scene.

I thought I found love,
But I only found disappointment.
Running to my room; don’t make a scene.
With my teeth against my lip; don’t make a scene.

Shuffling through poetry,
Misspelled and all the same.
It’s been the same damn thing,
And now it’s happening again.

But I was patient, I was cool,
It was simple enough,
To hold my tongue and cast my thoughts,
Into oblivion.

Set down my pen and rest my hands,
There’s nothing left to hide.
All I had, I’ve shared with you;
But, sure, I’ll sit outside...

If you want this to mean something, then that's okay.

In which the author has redacted every self-referencing element of the following work. The title has been unaltered, as it is less a personal statement and more a turn of phrase. "With my back against the lighthouse, I can see your shadow descend upon me," etc., is a well-known quote from a classic piece of literature, detailing the final revelatory moments of an elderly man's life as he gazes upon the face of God and screams. This quote is taken from a longer passage that has inspired heated debates for decades. At this moment, the reader is unsure of whether the man is frightened because God is a tyrant who reveals Himself as the monster He truly is, or if God shatters the man's preconceptions and proves that perfection does exist. It is at this moment that the man disappears from the text altogether, replaced only by a pair of brackets where his first-person pronouns would otherwise be.

---

“WITH MY BACK AGAINST THE LIGHTHOUSE, I CAN SEE YOUR SHADOW DESCEND UPON ME, ETC. ETC.” (2011)

watch:
splintered like a shaft of light breaking through the trees
[ ] see each piece of [ ] heart stride gracefully toward [ ]
like a row of sirens
one foot in front of the other
arms spread wide
hair blowing in the wind
mouths wide with the shapes of songs that become brainwaves
synonymous with what [ ] would rather feel
over what [ ] am feeling now

each part of [ ] is broken off like the limb of some unfortunate crustacean
slathered in an oily slick and cracked open by a tool of cruel invention
what steel arms can clamp down on [ ] now
tight
crushing
like the pressure [ ] can feel pressing into [ ] ears
two extended fingers pushing their way into [ ] skull
like that poor crustacean
forced out of its shell

[ ] have found that the only way to break away is to sever ties completely
brandish your hatchet and hack away at the umbilical cord
that’s what [ ] always say
think of the child fresh from the womb with teeth gnashing like a wild canine
start making enemies now
spare yourself the friends necessary
to build some later

if
[ ]
feel
like [ ] want to hurt you
then [ ] will
but otherwise [ ] would just
rather
find a way
find away? Ha
[ ] would just rather be something other than right next to you
maybe a waterfall
just go from top to bottom, disregard everything in between today and tomorrow
and just plunge into the waters below
unlike the crustacean
[ ] won’t linger on the shore and let you crack [ ] on your plate

lick your lips and take your silverware
to another table
pull
[ ] limbs
and divvy out the rest of [ ]
to the loudest bidder

like a god
with [ ] back against the lighthouse [ ] can see your shadow descend upon [ ]

What was I thinking when I let go of you?

“Argumentative, Then Pensive” (2011)

I tug at the battered walls of a shoreline department store
Dripping with the remnants of an unrelenting battering ram,
Buckling under the weight of a culture fixated on the material.

I left a candle to burn and put a fire out with my voice.
Hoarse with my forced expulsion of personal will upon the flame,
I lean back and close my eyes; argumentative, then pensive.

The department store topples, the flame rages on;
I survive just to see the shadow widen around me
Again and again for all eternity.

Or "Hindsight."

Molly Farrell wanted me to dedicate a poem to her, or to at least write one for her. So, here you go. It's not about you, but it is a poem. Enjoy!

“Sea Change” (2011)

I am
The Argument.

Combative but pensive,
I come not to kill but to remove.

Killing is an act of gross overstatement;
The exclamation point to a declaration of blind passion.

I offer, instead, to wedge an idea into your brain rather than a bullet;
And ignorance in exchange for the brain matter and shattered skull fragments leaving your head.

I am an aggressor, not of wills and demands, but of provocation and suggestion.
Intellectuality, sir, sings the death knell of feeble minds, not pointed sticks.

By that line of reason, this handgun should not be against your forehead.
But you are the feeble mind. You are the one I have come to destroy.

If you continue to resist me, I only become stronger, more firm in my conviction.
I am the relentless engine of progress, and you are tied to the tracks.

I am the unflinching, unwavering, uncompromising reality.
I am the realization that you were always wrong.

Today, everything you think you know
Will be blown from the back of your head.

I am
The Future.

It takes a lot to get me to start writing again

“The Destination Isn’t Much Better” (2011)

Standing in the way.
Sitting on the floor:
Palms up,
Head down.

Standing in the way;
Lying in bed.
Face up,
Eyes open.

Standing in the way
In front of an over-eager traveler
On a road to disappointment,
Carried by best intentions.

Standing in the way,
I could never feel
More like a heartbreaking
Bastard.

I really do feel this way.

“My Art: A Statement” (2010)

Willful, waiting, yearning for it.
I’m lying on the precipice with an epiphany in sight,
Face-down in the dirt with my eyes just over the edge,
Paralyzed and wordless,
The motivation to frighten, to terrorize is blowing past my nostrils
Like a hot plume of ash from the pustules of the earth.

Something natural, something inevitable
Is welling up inside me.
I have suddenly found envy in an earthquake’s ability to seize attention unto itself,
Or a blackout’s ability to fling anyone into a panic.

The fear of death is the ultimate fear,
An instinctive aversion that aggressively commands human physiology in order to ensure survival.
Yet, few know this fear in suburban society;
Instead, there is a fear of the dead, a fear of the presence of death.

I need to harness this,
To horrify,
To awaken,
To allow people to come to terms with their mortality,
Not through the cross, the bread, or the wine,
Not through the fear of God,
But through the discomfort inherent in the company of corpses, isolation, and the unknown.
To inspire a newfound value in life,
And to reinstate a respect for the dead.

This is my mission.
Perhaps it is ambitious,
But isn’t life about ambition?