Wild but Tidy

a metaphor for impending loss

There's a cliff in the distance
and you're going over it whether you want to or not

Typically in this sort of metaphor you're on a train

or bus

a symbol of a society speeding too fast

to avoid what's ahead

But in this case you are alone on foot

and you move much slower

The cliff is below you, you must climb down to it

The scenery is majestic at times

but traversing the terrain is arduous

taking your eyes off what you are doing can be

hazardous

You move down towards it,

walking, scrambling, slipping,

falling, crawling, climbing

Night comes, you sleep but do not dream

Day comes and you continue down towards the ledge

Rocks and plants

alternately obstacles and aides

Lending a hand then scratching and biting

small wounds easily ignored

in the exhaustion

It's hard to tell how far away the cliff is

sometimes you can see it in the distance

and sometimes it is obscured by landscape

You think it's there

but then it's not

This goes on for a long time

but not forever

Dreams are few

but sometimes

before you can surrender to sleep

you wonder what it will feel like to be

weightless

Because whether you want to or not

There's a cliff in the distance

and you're going over it

Places II: Montreal (2000-2004)

By the end of high school my patience for Vermont's small town culture had been all but exhausted. I felt misunderstood, isolated, and I was naive enough to believe city life would solve these problems. I had initially wanted to go to New York as I thought it would help me connect with my heritage, something I was interested in at the time. But Montreal made more sense financially and still met my requirement of being a big city, so I went with it. Despite its proximity, Montreal was technically in a foreign country, falling over the Canadian border. Adding to its international aesthetic was the strong Quebecois regional identity that enforced use of the French language. In spite of culture and laws, Montreal was largely bilingual and any of my garbage French was met by replies in English.

Montreal was cold, its winters were long. Its climate partially insulated and protected the city, a shield of frozen snow and ice temporarily staved off the inevitable gentrification of expansion. Most of the city was made of concrete, bricks, or stone, connected by wrought iron stairs and fences, materials that could withstand many seasons. Buildings were connected in long blocks with few alleys to preserve heat. As a result there was nowhere to plow snow to, following storms the snow was scooped from the streets and trucked to the edge of the city to be dropped in the St. Lawrence river (It's easy to forget that Montreal is an island, gifting it a lazy, psychedelic undertone present in Leonard Cohen’s early work.)

The best way to cope with the winter was by staying inside. Because it is an old city, most spaces were small, and although often dirty as well, they retained their comfort by virtue of not being a part of the frigid outside world. Besides the underground city, a conglomeration of malls, hotels, and office buildings, united by tunnels and a subway system of rubber wheeled trolleys, there were a million hole in the wall venues, smokey bars, bodegas, tea bar hash fronts, basement bakeries, cafes, record shops, galleries, bagels pulled from giant steaming cauldrons at 2 in the morning, cheap pizza, falafel, samosas, and of course poutine. I found my favorite art house movie theater, comic and game store, punk bar, dive bar, and restaurants. The legality of alcohol allowed my still untapped alcoholism to flourish, allowing me access to social skills while also robbing me of the memories necessary to retain social relationships.

As a result of the cold, many residents carried themselves with an air of coolness and indifference, as if ignoring the cold negated it. An apathetic hipness descended from ancient strains of ennui brought over from Europe. The youth were all the main character of their own drama, woefully underdressed for the freezing temperatures in stylish black, pushing through crowds on the way to the next thing. Cool, but unable to enjoy it because of their coolness. Oh cruel irony. Adults had no time to talk or look you in the eye, they were also in a hurry. Especially in their cars, which they drove as fast as they could for as long as they could, hitting the brakes hard only when a collision was imminent.

And then, suddenly in the summer the city would thaw into a kaleidoscope of activity, open markets, jazz and comedy festivals, the bright colors of buildings and people bursting forth from the previously obscuring winter gloom. Now adults had time to talk, and the youth were no longer underdressed. The tamtams would start, a weekly gathering of resident freaks and weirdos to the city’s central park on the mountain from which the city takes its name. There, they would picnic and party, juggle, wrestle, roleplay, jump, flip and tumble, wheel and deal, footbag, slackline, and dance to the pulsing beat of hundreds of hippie hand drums. Truly a bohemian shambala paradise.

My time and life in Montreal were very centered around university, and although I spent most of four years there and certainly got out and explored the city, I still feel like I only caught glimpses of what is a much bigger picture. My lack of conversational French made true integration into the community at large impossible but additionally I was overwhelmed by everything. Going from the tranquil forest to an international city was a big change, and my personality and social skills didn’t automatically adapt just because I was there. As far as cities go, I liked Montreal and I could have possibly finagled a way to stay, I know kids who did even without speaking French. But by the end of my time in Montreal I had made my peace with it, learned to navigate, appreciate, and love it, but also, I was ready to leave.

op art collage

crochet bags

the hospital at night

Enter a dark parking garage

through emergency security

A maze of empty halls

filled with dim light

but no people

In their rooms they rest

an uneasy peace

sleep disrupted by beeps

or the drawing of blood

before it vanishes into the night

Sometimes the TV is on

to quiet the silence

and remind about life outside these walls

Sometimes you even laugh

at the antics of the characters on screen

Then it is late and you must go

back to the world beyond

On the way down

large windows become

dark mirrors, reflecting a

tired translucent you

waiting for an eleventh floor elevator

When you get in

there are stains on the floor

try to ignore them

Exit a dark parking garage

a maze of empty streets

filled with dim light

but no people

opposite sides of the coin

Places I: Vermont (1982-2000)

I grew up in the woods. There were people there too, but it was mostly woods. My parents were New Yorkers who moved to Vermont. They met in Madison Wisconsin, attending college, where my father got a degree in teaching English as a second language and my mother started a jewelry business. My father got jobs overseas and they spent some time traveling in the Mediterranean and northern Africa, as well as India and Indonesia. Having recently returned, they had intended to move to Oregon, and were only visiting to pick up an anvil for my mother’s aforementioned jewelry business. But their Volkswagen bus broke down and they decided to stay. After scouting options around the state, they bought some land on a mountain, cleared the trees, and used them to build a house. Things were simpler then.

I grew up looking out over the green mountains, alternately a beautiful red-orange-yellow show of foliage in the fall, or a soft, white wasteland in the winter. I drank spring water pumped from a mountain well, and breathed the air purified by thousands of trees. Nature abounded. Deer, moose and bears were in my yard, eagles and owls were in the trees, newts and snakes in the grass. Rivers and streams housed trout and other fish, as well as insects that floated on surface tension, and monstrous larvae amongst the stones. Ponds filled with tadpoles that turned to singing frogs, along with salamanders and dreaded leaches.

I ate fresh corn, tomatoes, local cheeses, apples and berries, washed it down with cider or maple sap snuck from buckets hung on neighbors’ tree taps. I hiked up mountains, watched the stars, swam in lakes, rivers, and ponds. I climbed trees, although never quite as high as my friends who were less intimidated by a trip to the hospital, and sledded down snow covered hills, although not quite as fast as my friends who were less intimidated by a trip to the hospital. We built forts out of sticks, hopped along river rocks, collected eggs from chicken coops, and rode our bikes to the general store that was also the post office, where we would buy popsicles or pennycandy.

In the winter I learned how to shovel snow and tend a fire, important skills if you didn’t want to get stranded or freeze. Our driveway was a quarter mile dirt road up a mountain. Even with my father's dedicated care, there were times of year it was inaccessible by car and the only option was to hike out. I lived at the edge of town so I was the first one on the school bus and the last one off. My town had no stoplights and all but two of the roads were dirt. My rides to and from school lasted an hour each way, and contained such perils as high school students and bumps in the road big enough to throw you out of your seat. Occasionally they would get so big kids would hit the top of the bus. For a while my friend and I would intentionally sit above the back wheels, where the bumps were the biggest, until we got tired of having the wind knocked out of us, an uncomfortable and terrifying feeling.

My first school had only two classrooms, but this was appropriate as there were only five people in my grade and so each class had several grades. One time bees got loose in the school. Another time a student brought a snake they found on the way in and it bit the principal. Eventually the school got to be too small or too unsafe or both. Certainly, the playground’s many wooden structures were starting to rot, leaving jagged, splintery holes and missing monkeybars. The second school was superior in that it was much bigger, and because in the corner of the property was a washed out culvert where at recess we could excavate cow bones buried back when the land had been a farm.

Socially, Vermont was a strange concoction of eclectic energies blended into something palpable. The three primary tribes of hippies, yuppies, and rednecks, overlapped and blended in a loose Venn diagram that muffled and padded their differences, smoothing communities out into something cohesive and functional. People helped their neighbors, even if they didn’t always agree. The culture was also divided into three parts, although they strangely did not correspond to the social groups. One part was cute, quirky small town Americana, full of coffee houses, summer concerts in the bandstand, neighbors helping each other out, and all of the most generic holiday celebrations. One part was backwoods depravity brought about by wealth or lack thereof, a hidden underbelly of affairs, addiction, abuse, arson, occasional murder or suicide, crimes of the madness brought on by the wild spirits of nature and the extended solitude of the dark winter months. One part was comical hijinks and shenanigans, likely involving some combination of drugs, alcohol, fire, guns, sleeping with someone you shouldn’t, getting in a fight, and going to or from a place while unsafely operating a car in bad driving conditions. This all followed by reconciliations or an attempted cover ups and repeated with comforting regularity.

I never fit in socially, although in high school I eventually found a small group of freaks and weirdos who trauma bonded together until they could go places where their talents and idiosyncrasies could be appreciated. I am grateful that I got to grow up in Vermont at the time that I did. It is a beautiful place and it has made a lasting impression on my perspective and ethos. But it wasn’t the right place for me, I had to leave and did so as soon as it was convenient. My visits back reaffirmed that Vermont is not a place where I thrive, but also that I am very lucky to have gotten to spend that time there.

crochet succulents

🎃

two takes on falling

elemental alchemy

it starts with the heart

the beat produced
made waves in the cave

full of amniotic juice
fluid taught me properly

as part of the physical
it represents blood

shifting cyclical
which symbolize the tides

as they fall and rise
tied to the moon

high up in the sky
providing the elliptical

emotional motions
that move the fluids

and flow the oceans
in primordial ooze life began
as fish onto sand

water to land
earth to fire

and fire to sky
we're all going to die

and nobody knows why
so why sit around grounded

too terrified to fly?
i compiled body, mind, soul

the goal to mold it

years blast past

and all i have to show is
this lowly poet

who's flow is
slunted and drunken
using wind lungs bring

to sing something
breath collects

every letter never sent
left forever

compressed in sediment
with fossil lists intermixed

i split it with a hammer
sift through the sand

and shift the grammar
from random ramshackle

abandoned commandments
hypocritical shit

that contaminates this planet
to engaged awakening

replacing wasted dreams
run under sun

bathe in the stream
but the best intentions

melt on inspection
in a wrecked mess

by heckled questions
second guessing

and unlearned lessons
its a place blame game

i play scapegoat
with a pack of cards

and a hat that makes smoke
to cloak the physical

hidden invisible
with camouflaged gods

twisted and mythical
i'm a little groggy

slept for ages
a bored wasted and shapeless

restless mess, lets
take form and taste death
one section blessed

paradise manifest
endless seraphs

nestled in sex
the rest a depth so dark

no light can pierce it
tyranny and fear

revealed at their fiercest
ferocious, atrocious

and i still stay focused
in the humming coming

from swarms of locusts
insect infested

hive mentality
with downward spiral

viral mentality
callously making poor decisions
feeding ambition to televisions
with wisdom and precision

let's catch what all is missing
a magician in musician

i curse in cursive
nurse a purpose

plus encourage students
to build a new school

and this is just the blueprint
for a luminous movement

of unusual fusions
music produced

to remove illusions
ignite the light

you view right through them
i see confused humans

glued to conclusions
the solution is freedom

but fools prefer cages
i use refused daemons

refer them as sages
you can drill holes in chaos

until nothings holy
kill all your friends

and pretend you're not lonely
stay pinching pennies

to buy yourself that pony
i cultivate inner space

and grow from what its shown me
the elliptical orbit

spans the planets
enhanced advancement

every time i ran it
now its standard

expand bandwidth every second
clear direction

no guessing or questions
less look out below

best rise up and sing
elevate the ape

its time to grow wings
master the spectacular

and after the laughter
relax in the pasture

where happy calves gather
off the path where the grass is

rip wit to bits

to stitch it up in patches
rehashed madness

trapped words with snares
lured in verbs

which herd unaware
cured them in pure mercury
to learn purpose

we curiously
burn tobacco and hash

to make a basic state change
turn earth into air

by inhaling flame
brains smelt metals

with elemental alchemy
find gold in lead

redefine reality
said example

look at the right angle
and junkie transforms

to dust-headed hipster angel
a wino's rambles

become words of a prophet
government turns evil empire

gotta work to stop it
while they hellbent on malevolence

i revel in intelligence
combine the elements

and write rhymes

that are relevant
a resident of earth

and the cycle of dirt
death and birth

last and first
awake, asleep

and keep seeking meaning
in the city

i see while dreaming
imaginary matrices

made of concrete
all races and creeds

across the same street
big crunch situation

every place one nation
small world theatrics

minus disney animation
i'm waiting cross legged

to ascend the 5th dimension
listen to intuition

abandon apprehension
mind occupied

where lives that died reside
with lost lullabies

of annihilated tribes
played light on bark pipes
made from piled archetypes
building blocks of thought

from before talk was taught
i craft scattered rafters

into simple city plots
rocks make up the walls

with pine pitch glue
stitch lines of design

for the sun to shine through
henge stone till the cows come home
even if they roam off
now only bones

slowly grown soft
with moss blanket, grass bed

asleep for ages
awaken when satan's hand

turns the final pages
to pen the end

after the rapture
we begin again

i'll catch you next chapter

all doors are portals

cats and dogs

tea with dream queens

i take tea with dream queens
speak of the things we've seen
try and find a reason

for feeling my being's

a broken down playground

for angels and daemons
neither succeeding

but if either one falters
see resolve dissolve

like salt into water
as vicious fish

feed on wishes missed
in a land of stained glass mansions

ripped to bits by bricks
i sit in the ruins of beauty
shackled to the smoke stacks

that take the place of fruit trees
whose loose leaves

feed by smooth breeze
screamed colors in the end
no sound but wind

as they blanket the ground
now cement foundation

in the midst of a wasteland
lets face it

i'm the son of a country

that rapes sacred ancients
run on hungry tummies

and the pouring of pavement
escaped basic enslavement

to make this statement
all i'm asking

is to live is a fashion
where people are capable of conjuring

some sort of compassion
shatter established

learned patterns of past

burn frigid bridges

map paths in the ash
smash the hour glass open

fashion castles in the sand
sing the songs we sang

before the dawn of man
in the past on the grassland

masked dance reenacts
stories and myths

that are actually facts
back before division

eclipsed intuitions wisdom
we lived within cyclical rhythms
a fission splintered

existence into fractions
now prisons replace

simple interactions
a graceless fall

from graceful relations
i meditate

and wait for the day when
we awaken forsaken imagination

make grapes from raisins
and create substance

where space had been
stay patient with limitations

make them become useful
two sides to every sword

the ugly and the beautiful
to be truthful

i house both good and evil
together forever

i exist as all people
full spectrum collection

like light reflects in prisms
splits infinity

many eyes like insect vision
hell is repetition

the only sin in coercion
heaven's the condition

of two bodies merging
virgin and the slut

secular and sacred
molecular awakening

in bodies lying naked
everything the same

it all became plain
men as straw dogs

women, paper cranes
in the hour of now

watch a new dawn rise
there's beauty in the view

even through polluted skies
purify the poison

heal and live again
give something real

feel and befriend
sip from loves cup

sup on earth's pleasures
fuel all your fires

and fly with your feathers
endeavor for heaven

for over-extendace
bests resting forever

then clutching at remnants
when its cold and dark

and hearts start to harden
stay out of stasis

grow like a garden
fear has no basis

there's no need to cower
leave needless weeds

reseed them with flowers
in after hour shadows

scour city back roads
jack tractors and backhoes
and smack concrete with an axe
so grass grows

through the cracks

wear squares back down

into round shapes
as before the human race

replaced the ways of apes
face the past and the future

but reside in the present
stay wide eyed to life

savor every second
as summer sun

becomes wind and rain
through the storm we're reborn

laugh to mask the pain
and grow from the strain

so it goes from birth
turn cruelty into beauty

and help to heal the hurt
we walk upon this earth

but we're only human beings
so i take tea with dream queens
and speak of things we've seen

Snake Table

Another Self Portrait & Celebrity Drama

the crowd goes wild

she lay in the sweat soaked sheets
listening to the hum mmmm
of the rotating fan drown out everything
except the sound of the crickets
and the snoring of the boy next to her.
the heat made her irritable,
the absence of light made the
usually soothing sound of the crickets
an easy target on which to vent her rage.
she imagined herself running about,
stomping on them
with comically oversized boots.
however
this image filled her with
a strange sense of guilt
and in an attempt to balance it out
she imagined playing a huge concert
where right at the climax
of their last and greatest song
the leg of a gigantic cricket
crashes through the venue ceiling
and mashes the band into human jelly.