Guess who I saw on my way to class this morning?

Bono!

No lie. U2 pulled up in front of one of the dorms with a flatbed semi and started playing. It was awesome. (and random)

You don't see that too often.

The past few days have been extremely arduous. Once again I find myself at a crossroad unsure of where to turn. I'm lost.

She longs to be
the image you savor

when you close your eyes
and let the sound rise up

smooth and full

laying down tracks
that speak to her

from across the oceans
or time

I fall for you a million times a day

There are moments when I think
that if I don’t hear your voice within the minute
my heart will explode into slivers -

broken shards that know only shadows
until in your light, they refract a beauty -
blinding
as it gleams

A few minutes ago, I found 28 more pages of scribblings that had been filed in a weird place in my computer! whoa.

Ya gotta love it, the title of the file is "Not My Better Work". Ha, ha, ha. . .so true.

Every few months I have a dream so vivid
I would swear you are speaking to me

Some of it you can shake off,
walk away from,
put out of your mind.

Some of it haunts you –
sends shivers down your spine –
hurls you back to that place
you never wanted to return to –
the chaos you tried so desperately
to lock away for good.

“My soul is starving,”
she said softly and sadly,
staring out the café window
at the setting sun.

“There’s nothing here for me anymore.”

And that’s all she said -
just sipped her exotic tea
from the thick ceramic mug.

It was bigger than her
and heavier,
requiring two hands.

Her bony fingers wrapped around it
as if giving life to the steam
that curled from the cup.

The French music climbed up
then down
and danced sideways
across the red brick walls.

It was warm –
a comforting contrast to the cold rain sliding down
the smooth glass of the window,
fogging it up,
closing us in.

The night before, we had rocked the sheets until they were wet with sweat and wrinkled from writhing. We laid around and got up slowly in the morning. You sat down on the sofa with a bowl of cereal and turned on the game.

Feeling lazy and content, I threw on sweatpants and t-shirt, wrestled my hair into a pony tail, and stripped the sheets off the bed.

A few minutes later, with coffee in hand, I trudged into the laundromat, and there she was. Bam! Like a sucker punch to the gut you never saw coming. She looked up from a romance novel and smiled at me softly. I felt horrible – like my soul had instantly melted into a sick pile of glop on the floor.

For years, she and I had been friends – close friends, the thick and thin kind you trust with your deepest secrets. But now the pain in her eyes was unmistakable and unforgiving. In split seconds she had evaluated the situation and knew.

I felt sick as I loaded the sheets into the washer. She was behind me, but the burning sensation at the back of my neck told me she was watching.

I was shoving everything into the washer as if closing the door would bring some kind of relief. And there, at the bottom of the basket was the final blow – your boxer shorts – the ones she gave you for Christmas two years ago.

I thought I would die a thousand deaths right there for the sins I had committed. And as I tossed them in and reached for the door, they came tumbling out with a hand towel and a pair of socks.

Insult to injury.

I lunged down to snatch them up as if the less time they spent in plain view, the less it would hurt her – but my hands kept fumbling as if controlled by someone not me.

With a snap, the door latch closed, and the sloshing of sudsy water joined the wrrr of washers and dryers.

I didn’t want to turn around. I could feel the lump in my throat growing with my cowardice and shame.

Sometimes
the words descend on me
like locusts that block out the light,
the deafening screech of their wings
distracting me
as they eat every living leaf leaving
nothing but starkly barren stalks.

And sometimes
the words seep in through the cracks
that the pills weren’t enough to plug.

Either way they’re there
and I try not to take them for granted
or let them slide away uncaptured.

For the truth is,
I don’t know myself apart from them.
They are a piece of what defines me.

She lives in New York –
to the extent that anyone does

the city that exists
only as an altered state of consciousness.

The medication, meditation –
palindromic situation –
muted reality

that residents
attempt to raze.

I’ll stand over here
and extend a falsely chilly hello

that we both know
means only

that I don’t want to be able to
do something I’ll later regret.

She lives in New York
with the ghosts of other artists
who lay wailing in doorways.

I only long to be respected
she tells herself, half-believing it.
The truth is she longs for love –
the messy kind, dramatic and torturous.

She could fill her life with other things
and try to block the words from
leaking into her consciousness –
try to keep her heart from
seeping to the surface, but
none of it can really be ignored.

The exquisite pain of her loneliness
is apparent to every face she
passes on the sidewalk.

Being with him is the only way
to make the bleeding stop.

Today I exited the train station
at precisely the time the towers had fallen,
in precisely the place where they collapsed.

The sun was shining on me
and the streets were quiet.

A day or so before,
I had sat on a granite wall
facing a serene memorial
honoring the presence of those
whose lives were extinguished.

Their signatures bore an imprint of
life on the cool emotionless stone.
The city was loud and chaotic all around,
but their silent presence was unmistakable.

And though I never knew them,
I remember them. I honor
their memory.

As promised, I finally sat down tonight and typed up some of the miscellaneous scraps I found the other day. Before I knew it, there were 10 pages! So I stopped there.

You Set Me Free
Never will there be a day
when I don’t taste your talent,
when I am not set free
by the thought of you.

*

Sad
I was standing at the front window
peering into a funky little antique shop
and watching their reflections as they passed.

“She don’t believe in his dreams anymore,”
one said to the other.

I paused, stunned.
I can’t imagine that.

I will always believe in your dreams.
I promise you that.

*

Waivering Faith
In the guts of a God
that knows no grace,
is a heart of eternal flame
dressed in thorns

*

Ill Humor
Self-fulfilling prophecies,
the ultimate ironies
of fate’s ill sense of humor

*

Overheard
“I’d totally do acid and shit, except I don’t have access to it” – a 12 year old on the sidewalk smoking a cigarette as cheap as her eyeliner.

I'm starting to lose track of the massive expansion taking place in my family, thanks to my cousins.

A few weeks ago, my cousin Mike and his wife Renee welcomed a new bundle of joy into the world - Genevieve Elizabeth. I haven't gotten to see her yet, but I've heard she looks just like her daddy did when he was little.

Since then Tucker and Tami got hitched, which was a rowdy good party from what I gather.

Also recently announced. . .

Aric and Lana will be getting married next year,
as will Crystal and Marc,
and Heidi and John.

Congratulations Mike, Tucker, Aric, Crystal and Heidi!