9.08.2005
the liturgies that i speak
down in the darkest corners of my skeleton
are superficial superstitions,
and that is all.
i have not believed in God
for 8 weeks now,
but i am just now noticing that.
worse still, He has yet to notice.
i lost my faith in a gas station cooler
(behind the root beer and Coca Cola).
i cried for a moment,
before moving on to the milk and water.
days later (after all of this), i shall read a book.
sometimes that helps.
my illness is
loneliness.
pure loneliness, darling.
there’s a difference between
being an individual
and having no one.
the difference is a bottle
and a half of muscle relaxants
or off-brand painkillers.
now that’s what i call real medicine.
friendship is just a placebo--
hollow, water-filled capsules
that ease your mind
and let the rot rot.
overdose of camaraderie!
(it’s what i take,
and what do i get?)
a stammer like a drunkard’s,
a brain like a toddler’s,
a heart like a rapist’s,
a life like a corpse
with social anxiety disorder.
most of all,
just loneliness.
Humanitarian
i’m changing lives day by day.
i slip them on and off,
i seep them in and out
(like underwear or engine oil).
she is one hundred miles away.
watch the shift of my position
as i pack bedsheets into boxes.
my polarity reverses its pull
and drag with every clean shelf.
she is one hundred miles away.
i’m sticking with my past life.
no, it is sticking to me.
i thought about change,
but could ponder only this:
she is one hundred miles away.
clock out,
and begin the process
of waking from a long
and thirsty dream.
8 hours to be exact.
some truckers are suicidal.
i swept the floor
like it was a desert.
construction workers
think i’m worthless.
a dozen jelly rolls
follow me out the door,
across the lot,
into the car,
under the overpass,
down the interstate,
away.
inverse countdown
now,
in leaving,
can i appreciate anything?
two weeks to revisit two decades.
living is a filled plate, a generous portion,
but to speak the praise of every taste is what i crave.
my departure is a vomit. i’m leaving all behind, retaining the flavor,
but gaining nothing.
he took the French doors, so to speak. one door opened on the day of his birth, and shut like a guillotine when he first felt guilt. lost in a green parlor for decades, until at last in the shadow his fingers find the doorknob of his death. it is locked.
then, with the rushing wind of eternity, both doors swing wide, his beginning and his end. his entrance unlocks as well as his escape, and his spirit, rising on the breath of this wind, bursts forth into the gardens of paradise, unrestrained, endless, redeemed.
freestyled improv from 8/24/05
my life’s made up
of trilogies.
victories and wretched trips,
bound in sets of threes.
three denialsss
(rather Peteresssque),
and a chopped off earlobe
that dropped to the grass--
another mess for him to fix.
you know, i’m always making
messes like that.
perhaps you’d be surprised
that every time
he takes me aside
and whispers softly,
“for this, my son,
i died.”
oh, the very next day:
three resurrections,
wrapped in bandages
(but i mean no mummy!).
you still have to wonder,
when he peels back the gauze
and yanks down
through the plaster:
i know the manner
of his death
(oh, i loved the hammer),
but how was his blood
exchanged for mine?
loneliness is a cold room, baby
people take me,
affections, desires,
time and inner strength,
and spend me on cheap trinkets
to adorn their wrists.
i gave myself to you,
to all, as a broken toy
or a shallow cure,
to distract or heal
your loneliness.
in return i earn
distance and silence.
i charge no interest,
only my own heart-break.
but fear not, i have
a bed to hold me
as i comfort myself,
as tears part down
the left side and
the right side of my face
like gentle streams,
as i mourn the hollow cavity
where used to lay my heart,
before it was consumed
like a small chocolate candy
by those whom i adore.
some would say it,
and i do feel it--
i am a loan.
so distinct is the last night of childhood,
like watching a trainwreck with my elbows
on the rail crossing or witnessing a grandfather’s
last blink with his head resting in my hands.
anxious, impatient, waiting for months,
only to find that the last moments freeze
into solid icy snapshots and pass through me
like knitting needles through fine satin.
i curled up in the same bed i’ve always had
and felt the waves of sleep and change creep
over my knees and wrists and finally over my eyes.
i will wake up a new man and leave forever.
i will have the same fears and aspirations.
i will desire the same selfish, hopeless things.
can we change anything besides our surroundings?
i will wake up tommorow and leave forever.
i have this terminal illness,
identified and diagnosed
as i lay in bed watching
seconds cycling by one at a time.
the symptoms are a heartbeat
and pulsing brain cells.
my body is a tumor.
it grows and expands
with every dividing cell,
with every growing muscle,
with the stretching skin
and sprouting hair and fingernails.
the disease rushes in and out
of me with every breath.
every completion of waking and sleeping
carries me one day closer
to the grave i’ll be keeping.
this life shall be my death,
and i spread it to you as i touch your mouth with mine.
whoever said "i wish i could go back and change the past" needs to realize that they've already gone back and changed everything. they changed their past as soon as they thought of it, because (i am sorry, dear) our memories are as pure as shit.
whoever said "i wish i could travel to the future" needs to realize they're on their way right now, and they can change their future as easily as they've changed their past. all it takes is one action: a decision.
the only place we cannot touch or change is right here and right now--the unbearable emotions, incomprehensible states, the depth and width of a world to which we do not belong. we are incapable of altering the untouchable present that beats us down and drags us out the door into tommorow.
i am a sizeable solar system,
with driting sentiments
and spinning convictions.
the regular cycles
of my days and nights
do have a center.
the awkward egg
ellipses of my reality
have a still core.
you may wish it not
(and so may i),
but you are the sun.
what i am rotates about
and is centered upon
you and your glow.
if your light ceases,
if your heat comes to an end,
than so do i.
Backseat to Saugatuck (losing the world as i go)
sunset is the world
turned on its side,
when my shadow runs
along walls and telephone poles
instead of the ground.
my feet no longer
carry me along
horizontal planes,
but drag me upwards
and lure me downwards,
my spirit traversing
from heaven to hell
and back again.
the sky is red,
and is snuffed out
with a gasp
as the sun passes
behind the world,
away from me.
it flickers out
like a desperate candle,
and with it goes
the light of my soul.
Numbers are Numb-ers
shifting through page after page
of pie charts and line graphs
(each shape representing small bundles of people)
is like overdosing on novacaine
on your wedding day, the day of your first kiss.
my father turned on the television
like an over-sized microwave oven,
displaying images of bloody children over an appealing bed
of arena rock anthems.
these pictures circled in our view like TV dinners.
statistics are no substitute
for what we once called “conscience”
(conscience being that hunger for divine perfection
which we anaesthesize with our every
slanted percentage, heartless analysis, and insincere dogma).
down in the darkest corners of my skeleton
are superficial superstitions,
and that is all.
i have not believed in God
for 8 weeks now,
but i am just now noticing that.
worse still, He has yet to notice.
i lost my faith in a gas station cooler
(behind the root beer and Coca Cola).
i cried for a moment,
before moving on to the milk and water.
days later (after all of this), i shall read a book.
sometimes that helps.
my illness is
loneliness.
pure loneliness, darling.
there’s a difference between
being an individual
and having no one.
the difference is a bottle
and a half of muscle relaxants
or off-brand painkillers.
now that’s what i call real medicine.
friendship is just a placebo--
hollow, water-filled capsules
that ease your mind
and let the rot rot.
overdose of camaraderie!
(it’s what i take,
and what do i get?)
a stammer like a drunkard’s,
a brain like a toddler’s,
a heart like a rapist’s,
a life like a corpse
with social anxiety disorder.
most of all,
just loneliness.
Humanitarian
i’m changing lives day by day.
i slip them on and off,
i seep them in and out
(like underwear or engine oil).
she is one hundred miles away.
watch the shift of my position
as i pack bedsheets into boxes.
my polarity reverses its pull
and drag with every clean shelf.
she is one hundred miles away.
i’m sticking with my past life.
no, it is sticking to me.
i thought about change,
but could ponder only this:
she is one hundred miles away.
clock out,
and begin the process
of waking from a long
and thirsty dream.
8 hours to be exact.
some truckers are suicidal.
i swept the floor
like it was a desert.
construction workers
think i’m worthless.
a dozen jelly rolls
follow me out the door,
across the lot,
into the car,
under the overpass,
down the interstate,
away.
inverse countdown
now,
in leaving,
can i appreciate anything?
two weeks to revisit two decades.
living is a filled plate, a generous portion,
but to speak the praise of every taste is what i crave.
my departure is a vomit. i’m leaving all behind, retaining the flavor,
but gaining nothing.
he took the French doors, so to speak. one door opened on the day of his birth, and shut like a guillotine when he first felt guilt. lost in a green parlor for decades, until at last in the shadow his fingers find the doorknob of his death. it is locked.
then, with the rushing wind of eternity, both doors swing wide, his beginning and his end. his entrance unlocks as well as his escape, and his spirit, rising on the breath of this wind, bursts forth into the gardens of paradise, unrestrained, endless, redeemed.
freestyled improv from 8/24/05
my life’s made up
of trilogies.
victories and wretched trips,
bound in sets of threes.
three denialsss
(rather Peteresssque),
and a chopped off earlobe
that dropped to the grass--
another mess for him to fix.
you know, i’m always making
messes like that.
perhaps you’d be surprised
that every time
he takes me aside
and whispers softly,
“for this, my son,
i died.”
oh, the very next day:
three resurrections,
wrapped in bandages
(but i mean no mummy!).
you still have to wonder,
when he peels back the gauze
and yanks down
through the plaster:
i know the manner
of his death
(oh, i loved the hammer),
but how was his blood
exchanged for mine?
loneliness is a cold room, baby
people take me,
affections, desires,
time and inner strength,
and spend me on cheap trinkets
to adorn their wrists.
i gave myself to you,
to all, as a broken toy
or a shallow cure,
to distract or heal
your loneliness.
in return i earn
distance and silence.
i charge no interest,
only my own heart-break.
but fear not, i have
a bed to hold me
as i comfort myself,
as tears part down
the left side and
the right side of my face
like gentle streams,
as i mourn the hollow cavity
where used to lay my heart,
before it was consumed
like a small chocolate candy
by those whom i adore.
some would say it,
and i do feel it--
i am a loan.
so distinct is the last night of childhood,
like watching a trainwreck with my elbows
on the rail crossing or witnessing a grandfather’s
last blink with his head resting in my hands.
anxious, impatient, waiting for months,
only to find that the last moments freeze
into solid icy snapshots and pass through me
like knitting needles through fine satin.
i curled up in the same bed i’ve always had
and felt the waves of sleep and change creep
over my knees and wrists and finally over my eyes.
i will wake up a new man and leave forever.
i will have the same fears and aspirations.
i will desire the same selfish, hopeless things.
can we change anything besides our surroundings?
i will wake up tommorow and leave forever.
i have this terminal illness,
identified and diagnosed
as i lay in bed watching
seconds cycling by one at a time.
the symptoms are a heartbeat
and pulsing brain cells.
my body is a tumor.
it grows and expands
with every dividing cell,
with every growing muscle,
with the stretching skin
and sprouting hair and fingernails.
the disease rushes in and out
of me with every breath.
every completion of waking and sleeping
carries me one day closer
to the grave i’ll be keeping.
this life shall be my death,
and i spread it to you as i touch your mouth with mine.
whoever said "i wish i could go back and change the past" needs to realize that they've already gone back and changed everything. they changed their past as soon as they thought of it, because (i am sorry, dear) our memories are as pure as shit.
whoever said "i wish i could travel to the future" needs to realize they're on their way right now, and they can change their future as easily as they've changed their past. all it takes is one action: a decision.
the only place we cannot touch or change is right here and right now--the unbearable emotions, incomprehensible states, the depth and width of a world to which we do not belong. we are incapable of altering the untouchable present that beats us down and drags us out the door into tommorow.
i am a sizeable solar system,
with driting sentiments
and spinning convictions.
the regular cycles
of my days and nights
do have a center.
the awkward egg
ellipses of my reality
have a still core.
you may wish it not
(and so may i),
but you are the sun.
what i am rotates about
and is centered upon
you and your glow.
if your light ceases,
if your heat comes to an end,
than so do i.
Backseat to Saugatuck (losing the world as i go)
sunset is the world
turned on its side,
when my shadow runs
along walls and telephone poles
instead of the ground.
my feet no longer
carry me along
horizontal planes,
but drag me upwards
and lure me downwards,
my spirit traversing
from heaven to hell
and back again.
the sky is red,
and is snuffed out
with a gasp
as the sun passes
behind the world,
away from me.
it flickers out
like a desperate candle,
and with it goes
the light of my soul.
Numbers are Numb-ers
shifting through page after page
of pie charts and line graphs
(each shape representing small bundles of people)
is like overdosing on novacaine
on your wedding day, the day of your first kiss.
my father turned on the television
like an over-sized microwave oven,
displaying images of bloody children over an appealing bed
of arena rock anthems.
these pictures circled in our view like TV dinners.
statistics are no substitute
for what we once called “conscience”
(conscience being that hunger for divine perfection
which we anaesthesize with our every
slanted percentage, heartless analysis, and insincere dogma).
| # posted by Ryan Weberling @ 12:02 AM 
