still shaking.

the room was so cold, the green walls turned emerald by the limited light, a fan turning everything around in circles. we argued at first through simple words.
you started to swear, and i tried to hold my tongue. i maintained composure and attempted to stay level-headed, whispering first, then eventually raising my voice in hopes that i could break the barrier between us.
it wouldn't fall, the keep on some midwestern castle, spaced on the plains like the cathedrals of the plains. i repeated the words that i so often have no choice but to say, the ones that are the truest: "i care about you more than anything. you mean the world to me."
they sound hollow as i write them down, but when they came from my mouth, there was a more honest tint to them. they were gospel of paul, but still good for nothing.
i kept on. tried to break your defenses, i tried to knock you off your damn high horse so you could see the ignorance inside your own head. you couldn't.
you told me to leave. to find the western coast, the eastern mountains, anything that would get me away from you and your ways i see all to well. does it make you uncomfortable dear?
we finally agreed that no progress was to be made before morning and the negotiations broke down. you sounded relieved. my heart sunk through the pit in my stomach.
we whispered good nights that would have made a knight brace inside his armor. it stung.
long after you hung i laid there shivering. at first i thought it was the cold. the fall air pleading for october recessions.
i got out of bed, picking up the carelessly thrown cardigan off the floor and wrapping myself within its meager shelter. i looked for the comfort of a rough, unfiltered cigarette, tough love is in fact the best love, especially at three thirty in the morning.
i walked outside, still shaking. still running your words through my mind. still uncomprehending.
i meandered down these streets, watching the streetlights morph my shadow back and forth, a giant one second, a man-hole the next.
a prayer silent escaped my lips, a plea for guidance.
back inside i still fought for sleep. another novel was finished, reading by my only constant distraction. (that is the amusing thing. writing is my complete absorption in personal thought, reading is the complete opposite.)
finally sleep crept through my open window and infected me. it was done. i slipped into carefully constructed space.
it is now morning. i am still shaking.

wild fires.

"it's never bad enough to just leave or give up, but it's never good enough to feel right."

"they call this the badlands baby, but it used to be by you."

once again the leaves are quietly composing a symphony of golden yellows, violet crimsons, and burning oranges, pronouncing the return to the doldrums i thought i had left behind a year ago.
i walked with her that day, worn concrete under my feet, her on my lap. i tried to explain, a man speaking arabic in an american market, to her uncomprehending ears.
"i would give you everything you want my dear."
she just shook her head. as we left that place, me noting another landmark of my quickly fading youth etched on a decaying wood sign: calmus creek.
we got quiet then. we walked in silence as the concrete faded back into a worn dirt path laced with the falling fires all around us. i reached for her hand, but she shied away, looking at the hurt in my eyes like it was nothing she could ever understand.
we snaked our way through the twists and turns, past the laundromat on 12th street run by the nice old asian lady. i dropped her inches from the door and waited for the door to click, safety for you, the wild fires for me.
you disappeared, an illusion behind glass and then nothing at all. i inhaled. the exhale was not as simple. the sound of a wild cat on a lifeboat in the middle of the pacific. my vocal chords frayed and my eyes cracked, water running back towards the seas.

i felt so hopeless in that moment. i felt like i could act correctly, say all the right things forever, and you would never see the truth. it took a lot to open your eyes. a relocation that opened the door for infidelity. i was no saint, but you certainly did not make a convincing martyr.
the months passed quickly, new romances filled the empty air of the winter months and blossomed on the spring lawns filled with tulips in a surprising symphony of golden yellows, violet crimsons, and burning oranges.
however, like all things, they faded in the early summer, as did the others and she crossed my mind. it was intoxicating, more so than the aluminum cans being pulled out of the colored cardboard box.
i called her, but just left the line silent. all i wanted was to hear her voice, and with that done i wasn't able to speak. i clumsily clamped shut my cellular telephone and passed on to the world of the unliving.
now, here i am. i have arrived back at her doors. back in these doldrums that pained me so much one year ago, and once again she can not translate my words into the truths they are. i have not the means to disappear again, for i would in an alakazam if i could. just to see her tear streaked face in that blue sequined dress as they called for her on stage again.
just to see what this could all be.
just to not be going blind to the ways of the world and the common tricks of better men.
just to have more than this one last time.
just to not have to do what i know needs to happen.
just to not have to walk away again.

twister.

there is a first time for everything in life. i am someone who never really feels awkward. i am someone who never has a problem taking the killing stroke against your neck. i always am quick with a comeback and quicker to get someone to accept an apology. i never feel like i am unworthy, but i am the first to claim that i have been slighted. when i feel down, it's not because i am sitting back asking "why do i deserve this," it's because i'm asking "why does this have to happen to me?" yesterday afternoon, as the cumulus clouds circled and the boys struggled in their match to topple an unlikely giant she spoke to me. i shot back. then, for the first time, ever, i wanted to eat my words. i put my foot in my mouth as she put hers on my throat in the most instantaneous game of twister in the history of the modern world. they are both still there today. i know in a matter of minutes i will see her, and she will give me the same vengeful stare that i know i deserve. however, i am someone who can work my way out of anything, and this will be no exception. just, for once, i will have learned a lesson.

panic attack.

tonight i feel like the world is carefully collapsing. i feel miserable. i want to sleep, i don't want to sleep, i want to be done. with everything. with life. i feel like this is where the slide will start. this will be the point where i look back and think of friday as the precipice of the fall. fall starts tomorrow officially. another chapter of my life that feels over before it even begins. i feel frantic. i want to scream at the top of my lungs warnings to my future self. the one a few seconds in the future. the one that could stumble. it's all fading so quick. all of a sudden i feel behind. i feel like everyone is a few steps ahead and too focused on their own path to look back and ask why i am lagging. i never wanted any of this. in fact, i never wanted anything. i acted as though i did, but deep down, i just want to be far away. left in a hammock in the woods to live out my days in serenity. i think this is a panic attack. i'm not sure. the entire world seems to be slanting, and i am not looking forward to the faces that tomorrow will bring. i want to be back with my brothers. i miss them. friday night i realized it. i have no desire to be there, so hopefully they will exit there soon so i can find them else where. here i am alone. i want to be alone, but i can't get through life like that. i just wish everyone would fuck off while still showing that they care. that doesn't even make sense to me, but at the same time it does. i feel disconnected right now. like i could fall off the earth from where i am, land somewhere else, and only the people i would encounter elsewhere would notice the strange burnt man falling from the atmosphere. so, i'm taking off humming...

structural.

sun plays across my keyboard, creating a landscape filled with radiant fields and broken patches of deep shadow. thoughts skip through my head, building a tower riddled with structural defects. day and night, light and dark, contrast and compare, i can't make up my mind about you again. this ever fluctuating madness is no longer wearing heavy on my heart, it is just an ever present factor. something endured from day to day without hope of relief. "i'll let you get the best of me, because there is nothing else that i do well." move it forward. "i'll be the giver and you'll be the taker, i guess that's how this one's gonna go." let it end.

off my mind.

right now i am exhausted and still thinking about you. last night i got you off my mind. a high speed chase through a slumbering neighborhood, real as my fingers gripped the wheel, and then again as my fingers palmed those rocks. still, you would creep in at the edges of the scene. a distant smear of yellow across a canvas of green just before the rocks hit. i could feel it would happen, for i laid down and was swarmed with thoughts of you, plaguing me as i laid carefully searching through that painting hanging absent-mindedly on the living room wall. so there was a crash. shouting, running, swerving, stopping, shaking. that was all it took. no more thoughts of you. until today. then an empty school brought you back as i sped down the highway and back here. i'm starting to think it doesn't matter. it does. i can't make up my mind. i wish more meth-ravaged souls would distract me. they are so good.

drawn.

drawn together or drawn apart we will always be drawn to each other. today i can not get you out of my thoughts. i've been trying. i have so many things to be grateful for right now: a new editorship at the paper, great new friends, a trip to spend time back home with the old ones, and great accomplishments in all my classes, but i can't get the picture of you out of my head. the one where you look tired, worn out, across the grand piano. the one where we caught eyes and both immediately darted away from the reality that we are both still alive and well. although apart. although together. it's an inevitability it seems, i can't stop how your hair breaks over your forehead and causes me to shiver. i make all the commitments to be uncommitted but still know deep down that the sight of you will always matter. your name will always catch my attention, if it was actually your name being spoken or not. hopefully the highway, the setting sun, the lemmings, something will distract me. otherwise a few hours and bottles from now i will be tracing your number with my clumsy fingertips. maybe i will find a distraction, the kind that matters first for seconds, and then in regret for days. we will have to see where fortuna spins the wheel, down could be the new up. let's hope.

pop bottles.

tonight the world will be ours. we will pop bottles and make nice. everything will spin and swoon through the course of events. it will feel like we are young and invincible. otherwise, it will be a disaster. nothing short of feeling alive will be acceptable.

the other side.

the other side was in fact greener. the distance was difficult, a long segment between childhood and where i am headed, adulthood. i lingered in my teenage years for a few months after the closing, an avid fan hoping to chance upon a starlet meandering between the rows of felt-red chairs. a quarter of the term has passed as of tomorrow, and i am keeping my head above water, in fact, i may no longer be in the water at all. it took the courage to walk away. it took the presence of mind to change my viewpoint. it took everything i had, but it worked in the end. i am no longer feeling like the climb is upwards, but lateral, everything in the world within reach. today is one of the immortal days of fall that will serve perfectly as a fond funeral for my youth. today is the day, and the sun is inside my palms.

100.

this seems to be the trend of the season, so i will not want to miss the ship. i have now posted 100 times on this page, which lacks far behind you my dear, but i've read your words thousands of times, they comfort me more than my own. take piece of mind in that. no matter how far away i can always find solace in your neatly aligned segments of nouns and verbs.

i can not help but imagine that this is going to be the next page, the next chapter, the next epic. now that i have crossed the ridge and passed out of sight of the ruins, the flaming city no longer causes sleepless nights. i press forever forward, forever onward.

foundations.

am i incredulous? do i see the things that aren't even there? is it all just a game of wraiths and misinterpreted patterns, emerging to paint the ghastly scene a vivid red? my words fall to ears that only ask why. maybe that is the best defense that i have yet to learn. we are too old for innocence. far to out of step with our childhoods to claim that level of absentmindedness. for the first time, i'm not afraid. i am stronger than this. i am bigger than this. i am too far gone for you to realize just yet. there have been a thousand times that i have told you that i was going to be done, half-hearted warnings that always sounded hollow. they were. this however, this is the product of carefully constructed evolution. last time, you shook my world to the foundations, everything falling freely to the ground. surprise. we stand stronger with each and every disaster. you can't shake me, but i can destroy you now. the tables turned. sometimes i just don't know why you try and play this game. do you want a song? do you want an epic? do you want more than words? you can't have it, and he won't give it to you. paint the tragedy again. what do you expect? is this going to be another time where i isolate in the same room, storm my fingers across the same keyboard, and listen to your phone ring for hours? no. there will be no weeks of careful abstinence from showering, eating, sleeping. there will be nothing. we had this funeral already, we can't have it every week. it's been dead for awhile now. i wish that i could have seen it before. there were the good times, that weren't even close to great. i wish you were the things i said, i wish you made me feel the way i claimed. i wish i had sat there far from you and had laid restless for nights in a row. i didn't. there were too many others. you act like i have no one else to run to. no one else to care. i did. all the time. i know you cheated, what stopped me? nothing. at all. i'm so sick of it. the endless reincarnations of the same situations. this time i choose a different course of action. this time i keep my head up. i will fall, but not for you. not this time. otherwise, i will play the fool. i can't play the fool anymore. i've done it too long. SO THIS IS IT. FROM HERE ON OUT IT IS DONE. I WALK AWAY. if not, it will be the end.

going, going, gone nowhere

right now i want to be alone. just my books, my music, and my pen. well, and me, but just the ghost of me that i am becoming. i lost it today. under the gray iowa fall skies i had that thought, the one that's been gone so long. it was back. it left already. for a minute it seemed like it made sense, but then i realized it was her actions crossing my wires. i'm sorry. i want the best. you just aren't it, especially anymore. you say you changed? change means a difference, not just more elaborate lies to cover your sins. i'm fading. i'm going, going, gone nowhere yet again, and here i am back at the bottom.

stressed.

stressed. way stressed.

like 15.

it is really over, my childhood that is. i can tell. most of the stories i tell start with: "when i was back in high school," or "when i was like 15." great way to start a story if you intend to get absolutely no one to ever be interested. i feel like i am done living. not really. just tired. exhausted. all of the friends, the girls, the memories from my younger days are gone, distant relations who i never see. from time to time i will call, maybe show up at someone's door, but the desire is so far gone. i couldn't do it last weekend. i left, started pacing the interstate back to the familiar south, and then hooked into the rest stop and turned around. i found favor in rest and solitude over the comforts of spirits and company. it was a great choice i think. i'm making new friends, but i know it will never be the crew i used to have. there is no lothar, no velociraptor, no lil' jimmy, not even an r-poop. there are people i will fraternize with for the next year or so, and then pass on and be more alone than i am now until i can find more replacements. it scares me to think that someday i am going to die alone. that no one will take the time to read my stories. that no one will be around to retell them. there won't be. i am thinking about the coasts again. or at least somewhere obscure. somewhere i can go next year and know very few people. i don't know. i'm just lost and contemplating.

always fall further.

i'm losing it. i can feel it. it's starting to slide, and by it i mean everything. another disaster that won't leave me too far off of where i have made it look like i am now. when you think you've hit the bottom you can always fall further, and when you are at the top you can always see the the valley. right now i feel like i have started the descent. i am losing it. i can't keep this optimistic demeanor. i can't. i am scared. not little kid afraid of a ghost scared, but little kid of a world scared. insignificance is ravaging my thoughts lately. to what ends does this all go? the questions everyone fights tooth and nail with, but i'm feeling like it doesn't matter. at all. i know how to play the game to the richest ends, or at least the satisfactory, and it is so uninteresting. i can lead an average life and get away with it, and i know how. in five years i could be there. i know if i picked a girl tomorrow, i could get her to love me. settle down. live out the time until we will all unassumingly pass out of this world. i can teach the children, attend the barbeque's and bake-sales, paint the face of a meager yet gracious small town philanthropist. i want it, and i don't. there is always a part of me that would give anything for that life. it would be rest, no more thinking, just living through minimal tasks. IT'S HER. that's what's bringing me down. i'm too used to side-stepping the issue and attempting to blame something else, but right now, thoughts of her are exhausting me. making me question everything. when things are good with her, i want to do the right things for the right reasons. when she is away i want to be face down in a ditch with a fifth of jack. just so she could find me. dress my wounds. rebuke me. scream until she has no choice but to stifle her exhausted voice. tell me that i should be better. that i should make it work. that it's my fault, and that if i just turned it around we could be great. that's the thing though, i am turned around. i can't get things together much more than they are right now, and she is still out of reach. i crave the attention. honestly. i love it. i can't help it. when she looks at me i feel like absolutely nothing else matters. if anything needs to be put completely out of my mind, put me in a room with her. it will change things. it will make me unconcerned about the rest of civilization. i feel like i am arduously playing the hasbro game mousetrap. it's weighing so heavy on my mind that nothing else can get done right now. i just need her. to be close to her. to fall asleep with her head on my shoulder. her breath on my cheek warming my blood and stifling this malady. this fever won't break. she will really make it worse. i need to be out of here. i'm blaming this place again, and it is a childish accusation. there is nothing wrong with the sun, the air, the water. she is just throwing it out of focus. i am going to need to make a change. i just don't know how or what yet. as soon as i can i need to find a cure.


listening to -
jimmy eat world (futures) - work, kill, etc.

i'm trying.

this week is the tide rising. this is where everyone will realize if they can float or will falter in their old ways, succumbing to the sea. attendance's are down throughout the classrooms as the golden fall sunlight pours in waves over the midwest. i can feel it calling my name. the old ways, the old stand-bys, the old ways to not get things done. this time i see it, and i am trying to avoid it. i'm trying.

no static.

"no static, got an automatic, too much of anything makes you an addict."

i fear to think about the next generation, a group of children completely devoid of static, at least in a literal sense. televisions are going digital, the Internet offers no such glitches, and vcr's are becoming a distant thing of the past. we are cutting the static out of life. i wish it wasn't so, but at the end of the day there will be no more armies of ants marching dejectedly through a snowstorm, no more electro-magnetic frequencies breaking their ranks. people are already compensation though, trying to bolster the american static supply through their words and actions. i know a girl, she is capable only of static, there is never any clarity granted through her actions and rarely through her words. that might be why i love her. i know the minute i leave she calls out his name, firmly pounding the buttons of his telephone number to replace me. when asked, she gives nothing away, saying, "oh, that's just a thing of the past." a ghost, the lines cross forming static. i love the light, but i'm hating the dark, the ants swarming and covering me entirely. she leaves me lost, not like i was in my basement so many summers ago, an exhausted girl laying her head in my lap, sleeping, while the movie ended and static took over the screen. maybe it's never been cleared. maybe it never will be.

khaki ball cap.

i was unassuming that day as i walked into the meat market. this place had been preserved for at least fifty years, still the white hats and the bottomless coffee. i was in a rush, fumbling the money from my coat pocket, a military job i had picked up at the thrift store, and then handing it off to the cashier. i adjusted my glasses with my thumb and forefinger and glanced to my left, catching eyes with a not quite withered old man. he was wearing a khaki ball cap with a marlin on it, a badge of honor for a hard life selling sofas, transmuted first into a condo, and then just the hat. upon further inspection there was nothing remarkable about the man, a members only jacket and gray slacks. our eyes met once again, and he voiced a life's worth of learning, his only lesson for my five seconds of time. "old habits die hard, son." this he uttered from the gap between his ceramic coffee mug and his old, weathered nose. the moment i began reflecting on his sentiment the cashier interrupted, handing me an assortment of coins and a box full of animals. i was off out the door, eager to get back to the coffee shop and through the cold, constantly cursing the weather.

i never thought back to that day until this afternoon. i was sitting in the worn seats of my battered pickup and a thought crossed my mind: "old habits die hard." then i breathed to myself silently, an almost muted, "son." it came back, all in a rush of colors and senses and smells. an old man in the meat-market, warning me through his course of life. i should take heart and remember.

maybe just red.

repetition. the more i keep writing, the more i circle myself it would seem. that's what i get for being born a wolf. thoughts of wolves. ha. it's already edging late for the prosperous members of society, busy days that will not wait in the morning. i will be among them i suppose, making my way through the gas station line for the morning coffee, 37 cents change. back to the car. i will try and find a song that will shake the sleep from my thoughts and prepare me for the first encounter with actual society. my body already aches. a painful penchant for the start of the "work" week. church for thugs should do. the trumpets always take over my thoughts and transform them. tonight i am thinking about tomorrow, i know there is no room for the thoughts i would otherwise be having. this weekend was a toss up. the fall is getting under my skin, making me either want to be completely in love or alone. no time for half-heartedness in this season, it is too beautiful for lukewarm exchanges. i want it all or a newspaper, something to keep me company as the day walks past me. i am no mugger, so i see no reason to seize it. sometime soon the color is going to break though and cover everything, take this time of simplicity and lack of color as a warning. soon the film will explode with the entire palette of reds, greens, and blues. maybe just red.

crash.

it's going to happen, one way or another. although the in flight stability system is still reading all clear, it's only a matter of time before they are digging the black-box out of my seared and eroding flesh. i will say that i saw it coming. each day that is a good day, each day that it doesn't happens just means that we are climbing higher. thousands and thousands of feet. i can see it all from here. everything i ever wanted. even the things i never could dream of. we are at the top of the world. soon we will be falling, no time to watch the clouds or birds on the way down. just the knowing that no matter how far we fall, we will both survive. it will be a time of isolation, reflection, reading, anti-shower campaigns, and hunger strikes. then a few months of silence will pass and we will pick ourselves up and get back into the aircraft. slowly at first we will taxi the runway with simple apologies and how do you dos. then we will begin to take off, we always do. then we will soar, who knows what will lift us, a library or a cup of coffee. no matter what the device, we will climb beyond the previous pace. then we will crash. we always do. flames lick faces and form the end of us. i wish just this once we could be stable. no need for speed of flash, just a hot air balloon floating high above the midwestern city. we could find the indian ocean, the ganges plains and never look back.

thoughts.

since my laptop got stolen and i lost all two-hundred pages of the novel i had constructed i haven't been writing with a purpose. i have been posting here more and just letting my skills run lax, so much free-writing. however, last night, as i finished another literary masterpiece, an idea crept into my cognitive thoughts. i have started the storyboard and will hopefully more fully develop this idea before i actually start writing. i'm ready to put together what i know could be the greatest accomplishment of my life.

unfamiliar fields.

the sun hasn't fully jumped over the shingled peaks of my neighbors house, but i can feel it is going to be a good one. hope is flowing over me and the sun is about to be shining on my face. this isn't the mountains, but we all try to escape these plains in our boring sub-divisions, houses built to fill the wide open skies. today i will get out of the city. today i will pace the unfamiliar fields in search of familiar faces. i couldn't be more excited.

beliveve - yellowcard (ocean ave.)
one year six months - yellowcard (ocean ave.)

throwing footballs.

it is the perfect conditions to throw footballs. that is where i will be. in a green field fragrent with last breath flowers. throwing footballs.

turned.

the elixir of life can set things right! i pace the crowded room, morosely walking through each of them as they flick across my mind. lay down. see how long you can keep your eyes closed and maybe the next minute it will be morning. no chance. now they creep over me, only becoming visible when the squeeze between my fiercely shuddered eyes. stand up. get some water. lay back down. read for awhile. as the c:party crashers are quickly relating their lives to me, these ghosts pace the room, a flicker of consciousness in shadowed corner of this room, just beyond page 172. finally, a few hours uneasy rest. why is blink coming from the tent next to me in this encampment? reach for the opening. the flap on this tent feels like hard plastic. sunlight. stand up. brush teeth. get the elixir. they all fade away. the dreariness of what has sun soaked has faded away, but i haven't cared to notice. my thoughts are optimistic, undampened by the fedex man bringing my brother a zebra print tie. i am so excited to be regaled upon by durkheim, marx and weber for the afternoon. the day has turned, leaving me here and turned in on myself.

i am checking out. the report will say a.d.a., but my report will say i.d.g.r.a.

listening to -
falling out of love at this volume - bright eyes
take it easy, love nothing - bright eyes
spin - andrew mcmahon
pity and fear - death cab for cutie
your new twin-sized bed - death cab for cutie
never had it - flobots
'til i hear it from you - the gin blossoms
my sundown - jimmy eat world

courage.

i wish i had the courage. i never will. i am a coward. i am fully going to sit back, reading my novels and writing my epics while the one thing i know i want just passes by. i no longer have the youthful zeal to chase after you, making empty threats, writing empty songs. maybe it isn't cowardice, i have after all gone through so much for you. there have been dozens of nights where i have completely lost hold of myself, screaming tear-streaked soliloquies at my steering wheel. it seems to apocalyptic and empty handed to worry any longer, for you know not what you do. i am just going to sit back, observing from the shadow drenched backstage behind the set. you show the entire world your incredible smile, but the tears seem to always end up on my shoulder. he will let you down, as would i. i am not better than him. no, i sometimes would like to fashion myself that way, but there is nothing that i can point out. i want to scream at you that you could do better, but in reality i only say that because i wish you would choose me. i am blue with envy, for all the leafy bitterness and resentment is gone. it's just hallow. i think empty thoughts in my empty head about my empty life that you seem to haunt. from day to day, hour to hour, you will never put an honest word near me, just a frown that seems to say that although you won't be with me, you are still content to be miserable. i am still amazing myself with the unbelievable calm i am facing this situation with. somehow, i am able to sit back and endure this quietly. i never had any intention of doing so, but i guess we all have to grow up sometime. i love you so much that i can not step in, i feel like you will eventually learn for yourself. i hope. i have no more moves to make, gifts to give, or words to exchange. you have broken my spirit, but now chased it away. i don't have the breath in my bones to put up the fight needed. he would win. i don't have whatever it could possibly take to have you want to make this right. i'm losing, not to mention lost already. i had dared to hope things would somehow reverse a course of months and the minute i walked back onto that campus it would be mid-december and you couldn't help but love me. i was wrong. so wrong. once again, you leave me out of courage and despondent. congratulations. do you not realize it? sometimes the ability to be oblivious is your most redeeming quality. i should just get by it, get over it, or swim out of this sea that i am drowning in. as terrible as it sounds, i'm just chasing the ghost of a good thing it seems. maybe even a thing that wasn't that good to begin with. that is the coward in my speaking. i know that i have never felt as good as the times when things were right with you. they have been few and far between, but when it has clicked, i have known, for a split-second, that in the end it will all be good. i can't write this anymore, because it is starting to get to me, and i am lacking the courage to come out and say the things i truly want to see, although i doubt it would matter, would it?

cold snap.

i wonder if she intentionally paints on a sad face before she knows she is going to see me. maybe this way i will not recognize the secret miles she is covering. i am growing tired of these circles, first she circles, then i take a turn, ending up only at the places where we never "mean" to see each other. it's mearly coincidence, not a fruit of actual effort. there is much to do with the latest cold snap crossing the plains. this afternoon i walked through the door into the used bookstore, and searched the volumes for something new, but it all struck me as repetitive. how many times can someone read through a louis lamour book before realizing that the story and setting never change? already, as this day passes, the weekend approaches, plans and phone calls crossing the state. as long as i spend the night behind my steering wheel once, i will be contented. i am ready for some reverie. i could use the company of old friends, full glasses, and hours to spare. it should be refreshing and exhausting, a combination swirling at the bottom of a tea cup.

lua.

"when everything is lonely i can be my own best friend; i get a coffee and the paper have my own conversations; with the sidewalks and the pidgeons and my window reflection, the mask i polish in the evening by the morning looks like shit."

maybe i should quit listening to artist's who name their life's work after a fictional character from planet of the apes, or maybe i should just pay closer attention. honestly, the bond i share with this man i have never met, is the closest thing to hero worship i can get from myself. i have systematically and unconciously attempted to realize his words in my own life for the better part of a decade, and now i think i have succeded. anyway, i'm feeling lonely, of a deep and unkempt type. i just want someone to spend the afternoon with, watching as the wind swirls the wax leaves on the trees outside my bedroom window, the one with the little handle that says pella, reminding me of a place i can no longer tread but long to go. today i am feeling desolate, the tree in the tall grass i dreamed of so many years ago. within our culture, this empty america, we are all the fields we paved so many years ago. each man standing, straining to hold up his tassled grain and completely lost in thousands standing around him. it's all the same. everyone is searching for the same fucking things. why can't anyone else see that? maybe they do, maybe they came to grips with it so long ago it is already second-nature, no longer troubling. i want to light a fire, and burn our fields from here to deep ellum, forcing everyone to realize that this trivial. for now, i have lost my foothold and am sliding, waiting for the thunderbirds to catch me.

listening to -
lua - bright eyes (i'm wide awake it's morning)
no static - nappy roots (the humdinger)
not the sun - brand new (the devil and god are raging inside of me)

stay golden.

i can tell this week is going to be long and short. i have been awake for roughly twenty seven minutes, when blink-182 shattered my dream world and brought me back to the land of the living. hopefully this will all work out. hopefully it will all stay golden.

listening to -
handlebars - the flobots (fight with tools)

one night we were famous.

we danced that night. casually, but yet for the entire world to see. i hap picked you up in those fields, wind-swept and sunburned. i had taken you into the city and shown you the wonders you had always missed on your previous visits. we walked the gardens outside the art museum and then meandered downtown. we ate a restaurant that would not be considered nice, but it was refreshing to be away from the mainstream, prepackaged normalcy of the usual. then, in that restaurant, an old time melody crossed through the discreetly hidden speakers and captivated each of us. i had no choice but to stammer the obvious, "would you like to dance." at first you looked at me as if i was attempting to play some cruel joke, but seconds later the realization crept over your face that i was serious. you giggled like a young child and took my hand. as we stood the eyes of every after-work business man and his second-rate stay at home wife shifted from their meaningless conversation and locked upon us. the texture of your dress was rich against my arms as i held you, gently swaying to the music as one tiny corner of the world admired and resented us. we knew in their beat-up suvs and foreign cars the conversation would revolve around us, "those two young kids who just stood up in the middle of dinner and began dancing, oh, to be young, etc." we knew it too. we could feel it from the sets of eyes as we paid the bill, stood and left. i continued to draw looks as you were in the bathroom, absent-mindedly flicking a tooth-pick with my tongue. i held the door and the city sky felt alive, electric. we went through fits of laughter as we walked out into the streets, knowing that for that one night we were famous. unknown celebrity that would be looked upon by others who had been there and would recall in their minds the two young kids that weren't to afraid to dance. the two who weren't afraid to be young and in love. the two.

listening to -

viva la vida - coldplay (starting at lost and then just playing.)

topography.

last night i vividly dreamed. i was set upon a mountain, the gray early morning twilight muting the features. for some reason it seemed like the black hills, however, everything was too tall. the landscape was littered with ghosts. they vividly flicked though, across, and over the surrounding mountains and valleys and i watched them intently. inside this dream i found a deep comfort. i realized eventually that i was watching my own life play out across the horizon, a topographical map of my life. there was no behind, it was out of my power to turn around, for in a dream you can only view the things determined for you to see. i felt the slaughtering range of emotions as i traced the separate courses, the ranging possibilities. i saw the highs and lows, felt the ramifications of the fights and neglect that will still take place. in the same instant though i also felt the amazing highs and impossible butterflies that overtake you. my mind raced as my veins surged with the physical, mental, and emotional over powering that was taking place. it was then that i awoke feeling more contented then ever. my mind has shifted now, a new perspective gained. i feel the life back in my limbs, and the weariness that has been overpowering me fleeting. i'm ready to live life again, i'm ready.

listening to -

the wind chimes on the porch soothe the fan in the hallway while my parents discuss college football in another room.