Letter (Random Excerpt)

For no one,
oh no, I'll never disappoint you. I feel this dream moving inside of me but I can't feel the life and I think that kind of confirms everything. I've never been more awake than the day I realized the truth that no one really has any friends. And maybe I'm a little lonely, maybe I'm just looking for some peace of mind.

It's getting quiet again. I can feel a black haze falling over me, it feels like death, and smells like it too. Lillies and wine. I'm watching the curtains falling over every day.

I'm waiting, eyes closed, slowed breathing. The scent of a long past gently touching me. Pathetically hoping that tomorrow everything will feel okay. I had only wished.

Still I dream of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5yQ8JJ8R9E

Dying.

My pieces weave delicate patterns
Encompassing moments that brought them.
Splintering my own fingers.
Dying.

Every last note
a minimal composition
accented to a heartbeat
and playing along.
A peaceful penetration.
But dying.

Every breath drawn
Every breath released
Every breath that rises above,
twisting innumerable smoke streams.
Evaporating ecstasy.
That move you farther away from me.

Dying.
Under leather skin
from the whispers, gasps,
a smile.

And seeing the length of the skies
against the shortest moment of our lives
and living again, just one more time.
And then now,
Dying.

I wake to the sound of jazz playing in some distant room. I wake to the waters that covered the outsides of my eyes and dried. I wake to the breeze, to the heat, to the ground shaking under my feet. I wake to a morning now far off. I wake to a stranger's heartbeat, I won't ever hear. I wake to voices long since forgotten, replaced by some familiarity. I wake to an aching that never seems to end. I wake to this room, empty, with some awkward view of oceans I'm too small to sail on and of forests I may only drift through, maybe once. I wake to silence that hungers me. I wake to an inch of a swallowed whole that clings by nails that dig the flesh and cut the bone, but it's the only piece of this wake that I know, the only broken edge that stabs the eye and allows the canvas to survive.

Dream. Too Far.

The day has gone blind. /She falls all over herself. /Lost in everything, /it's some impractical dream. /Losing sight. /Only soft scent on the horizon points to some--/is it destiny? /No. Just something. /Some daylight. /Warmer than this/ recedes.

"I want to be left alone. I want to sit in the grass. I want to ride my horse. I want to lay a woman naked in the grass on the mountainside. I want to think. I want to pray. I want to sleep. I want to look at the stars. I want what I want. I want to get and prepare my own food, with my own hands, and live that way. I want to roll my own. I want to smoke some deer meat and pack it in my saddlebag and go away over the bluff. I want to read books. I want to write books. I'll write books in the woods. Thoreau was right; Jesus was right. It's all wrong and I denounce it and it can all go to hell. I don't believe in this society, but I believe in man, like Mann. So roll your own bones, I say." Kerouac to Ginsberg, summer 1949

Dreaming of Anticipation

Last night I had the most vivid dream. I was walking down a street, one that I knew very well except it was empty. The buildings were vacant, even though they were still well kept and the street was clean, maybe even cleaner than in reality. There were no cars, the people I had once known to walk down that street, you know, one of those laughing apparitions from a timeless memory, they were gone too. It was just me, and I saw the lights still on from the old movie house, as displaced from a sock-hop era America, gleaming in the reflections of the windows of the cafes and book stores. Everything was there, but, everything was gone. Everything that mattered about that street had long since abandoned it. It felt the way an empty stadium feels, like it has no purpose, but there's this constant anticipation about something that will never happen.

The next thing I knew, I was walking instead down the long hallway to my room. The room that I spent most of my days in when I was growing up, not the one I live in now. But it felt like home and at the same time, like I was touring my own past. The walls were painted the way they were when I was 11, except I may have exaggerated the pink color a little. I still remember the name of the shade: Impatient pink. It's so fitting for how I felt about it, constantly anticipating the day the color could change. I liked it when I was 8. Three years changes a person's perspective especially when it's spent surrounded by pink. As I was observing everything, still in its place and still cold as anything because that room hardly wintered well, when placed next to the creepy, unfinished spare room. Sometimes I swore I heard someone knocking on the other side of the door in the middle of the night. I noticed something that wasn't there before, it was another person. A girl, not me, but doing probably exactly what I was doing when I was her age in that room, writing some useless information from a stolen textbook into a journal. But the room then became less welcoming when I saw her, as if it didn't need me to fill its large, cold, gaps, with those high cathedral ceilings and the ominous unused door. So I left. I picked up my cat, and left.

Keep in mind, this cat hates me and because of its mentally unstable, deranged personality, I have a difficult time liking it (the cat's family has a history of mental illness... that was actually confirmed by a vet). But, it seemed really important to take her, so I did. I chose my dad's truck which in reality I can't drive a stick shift and this particular truck is part of the reason. My dad tried to teach me but, he gave up after a long lecture about how I was burning the clutch (it was the first time I had ever even tried). In my dream I remember thinking of this, my heart sort of raced because of the urgency I felt to get out of that house but I knew I couldn't because I couldn't even drive the car. I'd never be able to keep it from stalling every four feet. I'd burn out the clutch. There was too much expectation, too much anticipation, to much noise from the damn cat sitting next to me.

I did it. I drove to the end of the driveway without stalling. I drove to the end of the road. I turned left, this was where I panicked, I remember thinking "shift, shift, you have to fucking shift" and I did. As smooth as ever, I kept that truck running. I looked over to see the cat on its hind legs, staring out the window. I smiled. There was this sense of relief, but still that anticipation. It felt better though, as if I could be going anywhere, but no matter where it was, it was going to be good. I'd be happy, I just had to keep that truck from stalling.

Why did I need that damn cat?

I have this overwhelming need to escape everything from the outside in.