federal reservist holidays

_poisonoak @ 2005-07-21T21:37:00

2005-07-21T16:33:25Z

ACHTUNG: ADD BOYGHOST TO YOUR LJ FRIENDS LIST. THIS JOURNAL WILL SELF DESTRUCT!

_poisonoak @ 2005-07-21T20:08:00

2005-07-21T15:04:36Z

yesterday, i was officially in the air force for one whole year.

five more to go.

i got bored yesterday

2005-07-20T15:55:43Z

...and made a mockery of our flight information board. artwork courtesy of Jenkins (thanks for all the skulls) and myself.

plus, i'm noticing that i'm in love with coldplay again, and i should probably hate myself for that, but i can't be arsed anymore.

this is a sample of a project i am currently working on and would like to share it

2005-07-19T21:09:10Z

Here we go now, the car picks up acceleration as I whipped the corner, round and round as the leaves came down like brittle, red rain, and the earth swelled up and down as the street, this cosmic, hugged the grass and the curb and ran its course upward, upward higher, through foothills, through the valleys and peaks of this illustrious mount, royal and majestic in its altitude. A crown of clouds, a wreath of sky, encircling the soft ascent and gradual descent.

Rain settled in then. Green and brown mottled against the red clay that caked the sidewalk, run up little footprints from where kids had played ball and ran to forfeit the game to a sudden outbreak of sky. Kids now in cars on roads in homes gone gone gone, except for me and my brother who was never my brother but was, but he was. We've sticks like guns and we're running faster now and still I'm in the driver side, hands on the wheel, pushing forward, pushing forward, but thinking retrospectively, thinking backward. You with that grin and you with those shoes that had walked too many miles for a kid your age, as you swung carefree from tree to tree, as I followed in suit, hugging close to that sacred tree we'd lived in all through summer and ate its fruit and slept its shade and missed its roughness when finally we got too old and we ran away. But there's this clay, all over the sidewalk, red carpet walkway for the slow of heart.

"Red carpet." Me.
"Red carpet. C'mon. We're almost there." Jude.

And still, I'm pushing forward, there's tears now but I'm holding them back, they're suicide jumpers on the edge of my eyes, they're looking a long ways down but seein' home, and I'm at the top of this mountain, this wide, wide mountain with its rocks like perches and its trees like arms, and I swear to God I can see my house from here, can see my sister and my mother and the lights of the candles in the windows and the soft glow of TV on the green green walls, can smell the rich warm cooking from her oven, and its all blown away by a red, brittle gust. Me.

Jude led the way as I scampered behind, following the red carpet, now red with leaves and stained with orange and brown, but it was lovely anyways, and we got to the top of his hill, up from his house, and from up here I could see our bikes, side by side in the storm drain. I could see my house, but it was empty then. And warm billows of hot autumn cinnamon rose from the ground, the warm scent of decay that turned into the promise of life coming, and it caught me like a net, oh, what wonderful!

Lonesome now. A wayward wanderer without the sanctuary of car. The rich August sky fills up horizon and valleys and leaks its way down into the tributaries and rivers that flowed out and turned into sky during midday when everything blue was sky.

"Today we are learning to fly." And Jude with confidence, arms outstretched.
"But we haven't the wings!"
"But we have the will, and we're going to fly now, Moses."
"Where will we fly to?"
"To our house in Vegas where we'll run the strip and be rich in our conquests. We'll marry beautiful and we'll live high, no one can stop us from our mansion. We are invincible, you and I" and I'm believeing you every word you're saying please don't stop talking, we're thirteen by now, and you're the wisest of the wise, you are God in Levi jeans and New Balance shoes, you are...

And from up here I can see my house in Vegas. In my father's house there are many tables, and at every table is a wholesome meal that came from mother's oven while my sister watches television in the den while the angels all sing harmonies but no melodies and it's the oddest sound against the percussion of seraphim wings hitting wind hitting wind and rising, rising, oh, I'm coming to join you, Heavenly Host and King of Kings, where is my Jude? Where is my brother?

WE ARE INVINCIBLE IN OUR FLEETING YOUTH, SO HIGH, SO HIGH, THIS LAND IS HIGHER NOW AND GOLDEN IN ITS FALLING TWILIGHT, BUT MY BROTHER IS GONE AND GONE AM I---

And my brother taught me to fly, shadow falling on brown velvet grass, the Golden Summer in the sky above us, warming our backs as we flew like doves, as we soared with wings that were not ours. The melodies that our angels should be singing, but only harmonies and percussion, such a hollow sound, would you agree? And you would, as you laugh hard against passing breeze, passing children on the street as we like airplanes cut the air.

But my rudders are broken and shaking, and I do no more than plummet, plummet down, and I can't fly alone, and the encroaching distance reminds me of that, one thousand feet and incoming.

And royalty falls heavier now, royalty is dead in its impact, the impact you left on me, my distant brother who died at the hands of his own humanity, now finds me an impact on this hollow earth, this cold, dead place, victim of my own obscurity.

YOU WON'T FORGET

2005-07-19T18:20:55Z

i once wrote of a better place, the place that we hid from ourselves when we tried to grow up too fast. i wrote you as some solstice queen with all the fame of midsummer, amidst the tangent straylights of a setting sun you'd come, adorned in peasant clothing, a ring of fiction strewn madly across your shoulders.

and it all crashed down onboard a plane, connecting flights between east and west, the rapid loss of newly appreciated consciousness, vapor now against an inch of glass designed to keep the air in my lungs, air that's leaking between my teeth, tiny whispers, "my dear, where have i gone?"

i don't know. i'm more or less now just the streak across the sky you see when you look at heaven, the red lines on a 4x6 when you snapped the shot of both of us swinging, but i was too fast and too out of focus, a ghost on film, the vapor on your windshield in cold dead winter when you start off to all the grounds we used to own but now haunt.

i guess i'm just the film over your eyes that denies the existance of our slow descent, the fiction you see when pupils and lenses reflect and refract the light and, gee golly, belies the living lives of ghosts.

the cataract.

_poisonoak @ 2005-07-18T20:25:00

2005-07-18T15:22:51Z

i can't taste this blushing pride, maelstrom attendance of happy thoughts condensating against the back of my teeth. in its spread there comes a dignified sense of nostalgia as july decays into august, as my self-propelled here-ness journeys onward, parting lips and exploding forth! with syntactic precision, ensuring my solitary frame of existence remains tangible. i am a ghost of a ticking clock, spectral remainder of a second, tick-me!, tock-me!

nostalgia; i can smell the sweet, fragrant aroma blow in on the westerly wind, the thick, bittersweet scent of chlorophyl draining from the veins of april's children. reminds me of quarter-tank trips to inner catoctin, piling leaves up, up higher, you autumnal tower of babel! rise so i may crash in upon you--

and i do, at the speed of down, down, eyes squinted, fists balled, down, down...

a marriage befit of touching horizons, absolution on a park bench

2005-07-18T02:01:27Z

it is the last few months of summer now, that clearer sight that's rising up from pacific depths and covered this yearning sky with constant reminders of the days to come. somewhere, somewhere deep, there's this constant smell of butterscotch and jack-o'-lanterns, this kind of lonesome reminder that's standing tempest against the rising storm, the swirling, turbid black clouds that have congregated high above this marble earth, and with lashing fingers, they touch the sky and! like fists of god they wrath upon us, they descend upon us, and we all helter-skelter run, run damn-fools! for it is upon us as fast as it ends!

and midnight finds me where, no less? asleep in the cold of a room with a view? or feasting on candy and coke at the bottom of the steepest hill in town, curled up on a park bench with streetlamp light to illuminate the bone-white pages of this book, fog rolling in to remind us that we're suffocated and we have nowhere to go? and in it comes, despite my silent protests, this veil that befits the world for marriage, long and white and shimmering in the fringes of my tunnel vision. and this vestige train is held up by horizon! the trees hold sway over this matrimonial procession, and i, waiting on the altar of a park bench, curled with my bible and my communion, wait for the music to cue, for the wind to swirl around me and for that knot to tie between solar plexus and pancreas, for my skin to crawl and for this black, black midnight to lift and dawn! on the wings of a goddess to rise, fresh and rosy fingered, and for this world to embrace me and swear "i do! i do!" and for me to say the same--

however, the wind shifts patterns, north-by-north-west, and my blushing bride turns and retreats into the sea, that wretched place i cannot go, that churning place i cannot breath. and dawn finds me hollow and pale, fevered with promises of contentment and a place in this chaos.

and i am longing for a place in summer; to awake and raise, clear-eyed and free, to feel warm flesh touching warm flesh under cold sheets and for the rush of life to tear free its mortal bindings, to once again dodge and weave its way through labrynthine veins, and to explode from my mouth in a beautiful surge, the words i've always retained, pinned down by the cat on my tongue, but no, but no, i awake with the curse of another lonely day, awake to the curse of fog against my window.

no clarity now, no cadence to my unsteady rushing forward. and i have come to expect no resolution to my plight, only time, time, time. time as it's always been, the cure for what ails me. albeit my forlorn, steadfast efforts, i find myself at midnight, coke and candy and the pages of another book, awaiting. absolution on a park bench; constant in my forward fall.

2005-07-15T17:34:51Z

persephone then with the world said you, oh mighty sea, should rise towards beaches and seasides, tempting the resolution of man in a coordinated display of swell and fall, the breath of the sea touching prominences against this illuminated nocturne.

and like a serenade in D, with the resolution of harmonic structure nesting interdependently in the hands of melodic resoance, and with the stroke of a chord a ballad of remorse in the tempo of stumbling forward is matched, pitch and time, by the echo of sound emanating from the hollows of this sullen tool. so be it then that the rise and fall of the sea on man should equally reverberate off man's hallowed hallways and turn the narrow passages of thoroughfares and boulevards into echo chambers, and as waves crash from wall to wall, the desperation and fulfillment resounds like a harp, hollow but steady, as man after dying man shouts the last few moments on planet earth to that callous breeze that brought this downfall (the voice of a goddess!). and he will say as they've always said, such a crying sound, what a tragic voice, and like the speed of falling apart, this'll all just disappear.

or maybe it's not water crashing on man, no, but man submitting himself to the sea. and this glowing twilight falters as he falls, and the dead voices echoed and lost is really just the wind in his ears as broken man meets the break of waves and CRASH! so all the while such sad music in the key of D and the tempo of falling apart hovers dead and ghostly in the air above a closed casket, shaped like the bed you've made.

and maybe this was never the tempo of falling apart but of fading away, oh, what plight, as we submit to continuance that which is made for ending, oh us, as we fade from glory in a bathroom mirror, or from the top of a bridge; reflections in glass and in sea.

or maybe it's the din of ocean on a white sand beach; the push and pull of ocean on land in paradise, this escape we've made from lack of reflection. such siren sadness, such desperate. and here we come a-runnin', heartsick and fleeting, til this silent lake rushes up to meet us hello, hello!

_poisonoak @ 2005-07-15T00:51:00

2005-07-14T19:51:48Z

COURAGE! oh steadfast wanderer who through this mighty solstice sought to witness first-hand the touch of continuity, such wondrous breeze from the pacific front. and you're going's been a harsh one, epitomized completely in the agonizing throes of tempest; the taste of horizon over mountain lines, longevity of a moment, purple skied and softly timbred, resonance of temporal solace transcribed diligently over template and tongue. the re-evaluation of self and his place in the now of things. and lo, night falls dead weight over soft expanses, and you, oh stalwart, are akin to lonesome in the all revealing shape of night; your eyes! bely a greater loss.

written for sarah while sick and sleeping on a park bench on cannery row

2005-07-12T23:13:56Z

oh god. i think i might be sick. or maybe the sweat that's rolling down my arms and face is only the result of too much light in a cool dark place, energy traversing a ten foot room and incinerating molecules, spreading and splitting and rearranging the air between four walls; it's the rapid acceleration of nerves and eyes to absorb the reflection of a dying star going supernova in a hall of mirrors.

and a voice like god, she asks:

"ARE YOU ARRESTED BY YOUR FEAR TO DREAM OF GHOSTS? THOSE BOUNDLESS THINGS THAT WE'VE BECOME, HAUNTING GROUNDS HALLOWED IN DESIGN FOREVER AND EVER AMEN!"

And I awoke to the noise of waves on tin walls, the smell of ocean on a purple night, and there was a face in the grass curled up and sleeping, tiny eyes squeezed shut against the fact that none of this was real, none of this is real, and just like that, snap, I'm crying alone again.

_poisonoak @ 2005-07-12T19:52:00

2005-07-12T14:50:01Z

dearest clementine--

it has been far too long too long since setting sun has found me wandering haplessly to that deep, deep place where long ago i saw your wake, the ghostly smell of summer haunting flesh and lace and you, like a stone, and we all laughed so awkwardly as your sanctity was sacrificed for the serrated edge of an old stone wall that ever presently hovered over a depthless, widthless span. the smell of summer droppng like a stone through autumnal darkness. my days grew shorter with ever passing breath, christ all-fucking-mighty, how the taste of decay rises up from the swell and break of this age. and now foam like lace rests raised and soft atop the mirky, placid stills of this chasm. lace that softly says through rocky teeth "ALLAY! ALLAY! HOW THIS SUN DOES SINK AND SWAY! AND THOUGH THIS NOONTIME SKY HAS WINGS I LONG FOR WHERE THE COLD MOON SINGS, ALLAY! ALLAY! AWAY!" but you are lost and gone forever, though, seldom do i ever feel the need to resist that virgin urge. to take the plunge. follow you into that broken space where childtime voices laugh in unison and correlate falling stars to burning bridges, and my, oh clementine, my how there's such an emptiness there, and a longing for something emptier still, so i regret to say that you are as you always were; a beacon at the bottom of the lonesome well. and i am forgoing now my better will, no better tongue satisfies my thirsting still, you oh how lace like silken hands reach! oh my darling! oh my darling, clementine! we are lost and gone forever! pleased to find you! will you be mine?

garrison

2005-07-10T20:27:49Z

text revolves around a spiral notebook, three hundred and fifty two
words spelled out with the precision of a nuclear blast, and the
casualties on this bleach white paper spells out the end of an epoch,
oh us and our uncertain maxims, the rise and the fall of an apogee,
and we ourselves no more than two distant dots planned out and
pin-pointed on a map of the world that spans the front of a classroom,
and kids all over learn that three thousand miles is no more than the
blink of an eye. eyes open and it's all a matter of depth and width,
the circumference of the world turning against us, a revolution of
space and time, but in that myriad, fleeting second between shutter up
and shutter down the distance becomes what it always was, no more than
twenty paces turn and fire, two bullets on a trajectory and head on!
brave airman, they collide and shatter fragments that litter the
ground in what truly was a dazzling spectacle of diamonds in the
pavement; the discourse between warhead and warhead, and the shattered
titanium shells of two superpowers now sprinkle and shine as they lay
topsy turvy and random all over the whole goddamn world. we are
cosmic, us, we are goddamn nuclear.

so counting the molecules of air we breath, how each one is exactly
one atomic unit away from the next, away from the next, away from the
next, and soon enough we're exactly an infinity away, the number so
high and dazzling that the synapses that we've strengthed with words
and with disposition falter and break, and our thoughts like broken
dam water cascades through valleys and peaks, highs and lows, and our
fingers progress this flood onto tablets and wires, zipping around the
world to contract the distance i've created, and bringing together
something that never really split apart.

words are our garrison. words will be the steps taken to seal a gap so
high and so wide that no bridge can be erected, no span of wings can
make that tumultuous journey. so we'll march on our own and do on our
own but in reality, in that forsaken reality of air and scenery and
the smell of honeysuckle and the taste of summer and the acute feeling
that stings in your solar plexus when you recall the neon lights of
late march when you and the one that you longed to die with would curl
behind bushes and trees in the shadow of the old school and, oh, what
glorious, what tragic, we were never really truly apart.

_poisonoak @ 2005-07-09T00:34:00

2005-07-08T19:41:03Z

everytime a sun goes down it's just a moon on a horizon, really, the eternal revolution of one things to the next.

constance is an angel; longevity be thy name, horizon be thy scripture, persistence thy temper. You are a dark-eyed, clandestine iconclast to the ephermeral resounding of this heart of mine. you are eternity in a black skirt. you are a tongue of flame above my head.

god, and i miss you.

_poisonoak @ 2005-07-07T19:44:00

2005-07-07T14:43:40Z

And sanctity was the word less spoken, or so they said as all the sonic explosions of heartstops and crestfalls ran tidy little patterns all over the bed-spread.

xOBLIGATORYx

2005-07-07T02:21:10Z

woe is me because nobody reads my shit no more.

the cataract you won't forget

2005-07-06T14:39:49Z

it is in the fleeting despair of the last second, our fragile little minds reach out for anchors, flailing little fingers missing the grasp, but anchors nonetheless. the proximity of another human being pressed firmly with the curve of your body as you lay on your side; the smell of shampoo hair and perfumed skin; the taste of fresh tears breaking headwind, pushing ever southward, ever downward; the cataract you won't forget, the soft blur of new tears.

and the soft light ain't going nowhere. i've been dreading too much the up and coming and it up and came; these last few days on planet earth that swallowed us whole and spit you out, you, san jose and departing. and my brain in those last prolonged seconds of agony where we lay cradled by each other, well, that's the glory then i guess, it just swallowed up the tangible like light on film. and the sharp pain of farewell as yesterday became today and a knock on my door said it was time to go, and you disappeared into the open maw of a yellow cab.

and i can't fight the temporary, permanence is my only enemy. but goddammit, i miss you.

+a continuation

_poisonoak @ 2005-07-06T04:49:00

2005-07-06T00:10:02Z

this crazy little kid went spinning, spinning, red and blue and white against that early july sky, with all these flames all falling like it's fall, like autumn's come and is right here, right now, but i guess it really isn't; the placement of illuminated bits of falling fire spark like kindling, erupt, ignite and incinerate. some deep rooted fundamental concern awakened by the necessity to move forward and look upward! these explosions in the sky are really falling from the ground!

but really, we're just so keen and looking up.

THE LAST FEW DAYS OF PLANET EARTH

2005-07-05T14:31:45Z

she; oh such a concept now, with airplanes and taxicabs and this growing distance between two hearts. a constance in enlargement, and the kicking's coming in time with the din and the fall of upper lid and lower lashes, the wax and wane of pupils as the sun comes up and the sun goes down, a galaxy--no, no--a universe of unparallel and misaligned constellations forming a continuous ring-a-ring-a-rosie around the synaptic firing of "hello," of "goodbye." and that's exactly that. the haunting ring of a barge's hollow bell will resound with such temporal resonance, god, the lonely bark and cull of those sleepless gulls, the pitter-patter footsteps of kids running circles around a fountain that would've turned off for us in better days (no, no, the better days are here but gone), and the ebb and flow of downtown traffic turning midnight traffic turning breakofdawn weekend, well, i guess that'll all stay here, synapse fires, "goodbye."

so it feels just like the last few days on planet earth. like all that could be done was done and they selected a lucky a few to escape alive aboard some time capsule spaceship, blasting off and leaving behind a history of early mornings and late nights, bad food and a bitter taste on the back of your tongue from the medicine they force-fed you every time you turned around. like all the inhibitions and the mediocre lines all swarmed together and sank this longing planet, and it' said that the earth is not a cold dead place, no, but it is a chilly dying one, not quite there but it's going, going, oh, and it's gone as the firing mechanisms strike, the engines roar to life, and they wisk you away to take you home, home, and all the while i'm living out the last few days on planet earth.

boom; she says, and the synapse fires again, "goodbye." july's a month for long goodbyes and winter's always when i'm coming home, winter and its twiggy trees, its views of brown noncaring. and i'll meet you again when two become three. 'til then i'll just live on these asteroid remains of a world once alive but now not. and i've got pictures of our last hurrah, our last stand, and god i'm dreading the minute you knock on my door and i know i'll not see you 'til the leaves meet the ground, synapse fires, "hello," but at least this time it'll be for good.

_poisonoak @ 2005-06-30T21:50:00

2005-06-30T16:47:02Z

جداي راغله لاره دوي شوي
مرګ مي قيول دي جراي نه قبوله ومه

A Letter of Farewell To She Who Made My Faring Well, I Love You

2005-06-29T14:27:23Z

So there's a week now between now and the time that kisses goodbye and long distance late-night phone calls assume the space between two hands. Or maybe it's two hands coming together; twiddling thumbs on the long ride home, or holding a face in a lonely dorm room.

A week and then it'll be the same as it was before. Hotel weekends become a part of that jumbled myriad past of mine. Another milestone of happier times. A vacant point in this history of mine. And I miss you already.

We have our whole lives, but you're vanishing now. Months that are coming and going and an October I can't spend with you. It's my favorite month, but you'll figure that out. The first time you feel the luminescient glow of purple twilight die behind obscure, rounded little peaks that adorn the horizon like a crown, you'll feel that bittersweet melancholy that'll span your soul and eat your heart---the everprescent symphony of transcending darkness, the percussion of children's footsteps down Mainstreet and Broad; the violin shrill of crickets deceiving their numbers amidst the willows, lulling the world to sleep with their songs they are taught to play; The breathy wax and wane of the air in the trees, which I swear to God is set into motion by some great sadness, a country apart, oh God how it sighs such broken words through naked trees, "I love you, I love you, I----"; the sweet and lonely melody of the one last bird too stubborn to sleep, instead perched nightly to escape that purple sky with such a resilient little song, so valiant and hopeless...

Green grass meets sloping Earth and an empty nocturne rhapsody and forms a rolling hill that should be seat to the greatest love I've ever known, but instead it'll be a vacant bowl just sittin' heavy like some deep regret. And these words may not be enough to compare the emptiness I'll feel as I watch you take off to the solstice and equinox transgressions I'll face without you, and the sickeningly sweet smell of lilac and honeysuckle that'll kiss the air you breathe may never make up for the kisses I can't give you... but it's the best I can do.

Seems my whole life lie subject to saying goodbye. And everytime I've said goodbye it's been for good. But I'll sleep soundly knowing that this time I'll find myself safe in the arms of a permanence I in all my worldly ways can't even attempt to understand.

Just know that when the world drags out, I mean the nights get long, and the kids come out a-wandering dressed in their imagination, when a stray breeze catches you crying alone and brings you you the childhood smells of sugar and hot chocolate, that you're safe there like you're in a womb. I mean, it's the safest for you. I've shed my life into those hills and cried my love into the grass that'll hold you while you wait. You'll walk with me when you walk those trodden paths because I've walked them before and the love I could never give, well, it's waiting there for you.

I love you, Sarah. You're my reason for persistence. You've made me so complete and have broken me of my bitterness. Made me so happy and glowing and eager to keep this up. And the memories of you will be the frames I hold the old, creaky wharf in; pictures of you and I more carefree. Juneflowers in a misty Monterey morning, transfixed betwixt the ever-stretching blue above and blue below; You'll be the crickets and the mountains that lull me to sleep, the rocking lull of waves on sand and back to sea again, a subtle rush and fall of understanding communicated to me between the turbulent swirling breeze that rocks me to sleep and hums me to peace, like you, oh, like you're now the kiss on the cheek and the three little words in my ear that gave me strength to take on the world.

I will see you again. I will hold you in these aching arms. We will fight our way tooth and nail to the end, just you and I and Owen, innocent Owen, who'll never know such hardships. We won't let him. We'll teach him love and understanding because that's what you've taught me. You've taught me how to love again.

I love you. Be happy. You're the summer queen I've always dreamed of. You, with your long dark hair and those heartsick eyes, oh, you beautiful, you angel, oh, you queen, go take your throne.

I love you. Always
Michael

_poisonoak @ 2005-06-29T05:24:00

2005-06-29T00:26:03Z

dear;

remember when we met for the first time? i mean. for real. i'd met you in theory a thousand times before, pop-up and howdy-do. but i mean really? i recall it dark and barely lit, throbbing rock and my head hurt, needed some air, and for everday after that it'd be another pop-up howdy-do until one day you decided you would be my friend. and for every day thereafter we enjoyed one another's company at parks and on long drives in between the crystal falls.

i just wonder if you remember. we've become so different now. you. you're a fucking idol, and i remember when you weren't so much. i seem to recall isolated instances of humanity between us. where are we going? do you still recall a pale blonde boy with sinister eyes and a futility within him? (never was much for words)

i recall a little girl with stubborn hair and freckles. she had this funny way of being drunk and smokey all at once but never seemed much off kilter. i guess i saw her picture in a letter she wrote me when i had grown up and decided i was big enough to run away. and i wish i hadn't run away, i mean, i lost a lot in switching coasts. mainly mountains and sunshine (warmth in the summer, even?) and that awkward sense of where i was in the world. i mean. i don't know where we are.

i love her, though, she's my little sister.
-boyghost

_poisonoak @ 2005-06-29T03:42:00

2005-06-28T22:50:22Z

I still remember the cold of that Pennsylvania valley. Golden beneath November skies, juxtaposed to those forlorn old Appalachians, citadel home of what Bradley calls my sacred childhood.
All playgrounds and slide-on boards.
All swingsets and black hoodies.
Chasing ducks in the park.
~~XXXXXXXXXX~~
John Jones and the impenetrable summer fortress
Pop-guns
THE HILL!
That melancholy that set in when the Earth caught fire and I indulged my curiousity and let myself love--and through the darkest reaches of these woods we caught ourselves, stealing gravestones and running away from what really wasn't there. And if I really am just this boyghost I'm making myself out to be, well, then am I just vanishing away now? Going back to whatever Nether I came from?

note: everything I've written lately is a subsequent result of falling asleep sick. Words from dreams that I don't understand. I probably don't mean half of what I say but, well, I'm saying it anyway. And there's no direction to these words, and if any, it's mostly by god-slinging father. Things I never want to become.

I think I'm leaking, somewhere. And puddling around my feet are these conglomerations of disposition; these messy rebuttles to my own nostalgic conscience.

I dunno. I'm just really fucking homesick anymore. I mainly miss pumpkin patches before Halloween and how dead the corn rows got, enough to dig about for the giant orange pumpkins that we'd carve our deepest fears into, set out and lit up to scare the little ones as they parade by for sweets and an excuse to dress up. I mainly miss being alone, sandy and blonde-headed, not as gray as my hair's starting to become (and at 19!)... Blue-eyed and okay.

I miss myself.

gullsong

2005-06-27T14:51:59Z

i dreamt i dug up graves while i slept passed out in a field next to where the waves crashed to-and-fro against california sand, the gulls cried endless under sweet summer junebug sun; and they told me of things i didn't know, like how the whole earth's spinning slower slower now than it has ever spun before. and we all live in mason jars between the beaches and the bars and thank the good god for the air that i can't breathe. and you can look in whenever you want and you can cut off all my air (and you can act like you don't care) and you can claim that you've got jesus on the line.

but the gulls and crows have got the truth, the yellow birds keep spitting lies and i watch sarah feeding pigeons in the park. and i know that this is where it lies, between the half-truths that you cried, is that my hand is in the better place these days. and i'll escape this mason jar. and i'll escape this prison state. and i'll wake up from this sick sick dream.

Boy

2005-06-26T22:10:16Z

So November 15th and boyghost, jr. will haunt this earth beside me. Sarah and I are debating over names, but we're both keen on Owen Michael Wriston (she insists on the Michael part, though, and I just wish he didn't have a middle name).

Anyway. Yesterday was gorgeous and ended with early sleep. I got sick from congratulatory cigars and apple fritters, and stumbled pale and feverish into a field of green clover and dandelions next to the San Carlos Beach, where I passed out and slept and dreamt of digging up graves, and now, in my more lonely of hours, I find myself doing just that but with a myrthsome contentment. And I woke up burnt and unrivaled in my contest, caught a cab back and ate chicken noodle and apple-sauce and watched the world end on my television screen (21" armageddon and flat panel, mind you).

And now it's time to iron a uniform, to hike back to my room and clean and vaccuum and polish low-quarters and do homework so I can finish one more week and be that much closer to speaking gibberish professionaly, sh'u'kor dey.

Sigh, and Sarah, how you've made me so happy anymore.

thought process of things i've come to fear but love it because i do

2005-06-24T14:49:43Z

i remember that a year ago i hated children. correction. about seven months ago i wouldn't be caught dead in their presence. but then life, y'know, it has that way of dropping things on you and laughing. but i'm finding myself doing the things i'd swear i'd never do. scariest of all is the smile that's gonna show up, and the way my heart's going to melt altogether, and then i'll be that person i had never wanted to be. i guess i dunno. a father? i hated mine. and there's no two ways about that, he was the epitome of the god-toting false-idol that the church had taught me to despise and to hate. and he hated my family and used us for status, and to this day i hate popularity and i hate what status can do, and embody every secret loathing in him.

and i fear that my child my someday think of me like that. and to think that the smile i'll see when i first see my son, daughter, whatever, might someday hold the same embittered thoughts against me. and i can't stand that...

oh but of course i'm having those parental fears, the sillier ones, like when you walk out in the yard and see them in a tree and the first thing you think is "my god, he'll fall and break himself." though that's just silly of me, ha ha at me, michael.

and all of this because today i find out what the rest of my life will be full of. i mean, either way, it'll be something. but today sarah goes in and they'll take pictures of what i can't see but can only feel when legs and arms press against me when we sleep, or that smile that shows up whenever he wakes up and sarah can feel it and, oh, the way that she warms up when the thought of monkey costumes for halloween or deck-chairs on the beach and camping trips to the northern appalachians, nights spent in cities and concerts (when he or she's older, owen or ella i can't be too sure yet, 1:30 that'll change)...

i'm so happy with where i am, and the 180 i've made shocks, oh, she astounds.