I'm tired.
Again.
I'm tired of being in this place,
this vacant, empty place
where it's just me
and a burnt joint, stained walls
and floors that splinter your feet when you walk.

I'm tired
of sitting here without shoes,
with filthy clothes
and a visage not even a mother can love.
I'm tired of it,

this house I guess I built
on a country road someplace
in the heart of Missouri,
surrounded by the obese.

I fear I'll have to move,
uproot everything, find
another street,
another city,
another state,
to call home
but I can't.
This house is me.

I want to die.
I want to place that gun to my head,
loaded with hollow point lead,
smooth brass,
and squeeze the trigger.

I want to burn it down.
I want to see the flames reach 300 hundred feet in the air.
I want to see the two neighbors from a mile down the road
huddle up in blankets across the street
and revel in my tragedy.
I want to see them.

I'm destitute.
Again.
Nothing to offer but a cup of water,
only the thirstiest would drink from me.

What more can I do?
What more can I be?
Was it any different when I did the right thing?
More of the same thing, I think.
Just a few more interested faces peering in, thinking
"this is a nice place, but I wouldn't want to live here."

Everyone, same thing.

"Nice place, let's find a better one."

And the slums are full of people.

I'd guess I priced myself out of the market,
but I'm giving myself away.
I can't give more than I have.
I can't pay someone to live here.

my head is splitting
from the top down.
There's pressure, an ice pick
slowly sinking, crushing
the fragile spirit I have left.

I can't be alone.
I can't be alone forever.
I can be in solitude. I prefer it at times,
but I can't be alone.

I can't have noone to care for.
I can't just care for myself.
I don't want the world.
I don't want houses and cars and abundance,
I want just what I need, nothing more,
but my needs are unfilled.
I can't be alone.

the soles of my feet are raw.
My face has the palor of a corpse.
Beneath my smile,
the flush skin,
there lives a zombie.

depraved, cursed
with a hunger that can't be filled,
doesn't know how to be.

they won't love you for who you are.
they won't love a zombie.

no one loves a corpse. No one wants a shell.
Corpses are buried.
Corpses are burned,
tossed out in the air in sadness
or in celebration depending
on the wishes of the deceased.

and those who die alone are left on the side of the street,
treated with indignity.

the homeless?
tossed out in a pine box?
would they have been eaten in an earlier day?
our peaceful world, our thriving society does them,
does us
the favor of letting us live,
but for what?

Is a life void of love worth living?
Is a life with no passion sustainable?
am I to be angry or sad or depressed because I won't die?
because I chose life? and choose it again and again despite
that it's proven itself hostile to me?

why won't I die?

maybe I still have that little silver piece,
that slice of hope,
lost up in the rafters somewhere.
maybe,
just maybe,
there's someone out there who'll move in
who'll see this beautiful house,
beset with neglect,
spurned for it's rough exterior,
overgrown weeds,
and give it life, love it.

do I have a time to expire?
Is God so cruel that he'd give me
just enough of a taste to keep going?
Is THIS LIFE?
to be dragged along the road
behind a truck for years,
hospitalized, healed,
and returned to the pavement?
Is THIS LIFE?
to be tortured with glimpses
and tastes and visions of happiness
to have them eternally shuttered up
as soon as your soul begins to be lifted?
Is it to have your legs endlessly kicked from beneath you?
to have love, peace,
regularly torn from your grasp?

what happens to those who don't learn?
Who struggle? To those Who can't make sense of things?
What happens to those who don't know
that it's their own choices that shutter them up?
What happens to those who do, but can't change?

Is it always starting from scratch?
from square one?
Over and over?

Is this life?

I know what it's like to have a warm home.
Mine has been cold for years.

dark wood calm

dark wood calm
white tail walks
alone in the forest
he let his head down
low to the ground
feet crunch leaves,
no finesse
light beams stab
the eyes of the buck
he stares
drawn to it
braced
a voice
calls out in a language
he can't hear
the strange clicks and hums
of human tongues
and a shout
he leaps
ten feet in the air
white tail flashes behind him
gone, hidden
by the ivy and the oak.
he went close once
against his better judgement,
drawn by light,
stunned with beauty
he let
the curious appendages of men
caress his back
he ate.
his hope realized.
he sat
in the company of men
he sat
and the day was calm
a shot
he lept
hind legs buckled beneath him
working but only barely
they followed the trail of blood
for two miles
lost it in the stream
his breath came shallowly
for weeks
he stared into the darkness
leaned heavily
legs dangled over the precipice
and he panted
he didn't slide
weeks.
he walked through the pain
thirst dried his tongue
he walked to the edge of the water
leaned down deeply, drank
he limped.
months.
alone in the calm
in the fog laden field,
the cool morning

"Are you Mr. William Stafford?" "Yes, but...." Well, it was yesterday. Sunlight used to follow my hand. And that's when the strange siren-like sound flooded over the horizon and rushed through the streets of our town. That's when sunlight came from behind a rock and began to follow my hand. "It's for the best," my mother said—"Nothing can ever be wrong for anyone truly good." So later the sun settled back and the sound faded and was gone. All along the streets every house waited, white, blue, gray: trees were still trying to arch as far as they could. You can't tell when strange things with meaning will happen. I'm [still] here writing it down just the way it was. "You don't have to prove anything," my mother said. "Just be ready for what God sends." I listened and put my hand out in the sun again. It was all easy. Well, it was yesterday. And the sun came, Why It came.

—William Stafford

I think.

That thought is unworthy, though.
I
can't be sure.

It's somewhere... masked
by the sable space
inside me.

To you, void,
one word:
who?
I ask that with reservation.
Don't want the answer.
I have the suspicion
that you may be dangerous.

Worthy and true...
This thought...

More likely, it's what others
see as their great deep blue;
the thing that seethes and throbs,
that sea inside them
teeming with a trillion
planktons of thought;
with sharks,
with the rare blue whale,
the orca, cunning porpoises,
sea turtles

small in the expanse.
Drops in the great bucket.

Perhaps my sea
is at night;
new moon,
clouded sky,

only the distant candles of dead men
borne on the rafts
of the ship wrecked, abandoned,
cut through the darkness like stars.
They float lonely,
greeted only
by the sound of lapping waves.
One by one,
they lift up their last candle
and die out.

Candles burn to the hilt.
The matches are used up.
Daylight never comes.

No rain water.
Nothing to catch it in, anyway.

The sharks
circle silently beneath them.
They wait
on the big wave
the rogue wave
or the storm to
dump the dead
into the sea.

The wasteland is
as barren for them
as for the silenced.
The silenced;
they thirsted.

Yeah, I've been heavily considering just picking uip and leaving for someplace I've never been. I've got an itch, and it needs scratched, dammit. I'm fully prepared to let my life just fall apart, while I go live another one elsewhere. I'll only have marginally less than what I have right now on my return... If I return.

You should totally come. Dash it all. Chalk it up to youthful whimsy. Chalk it up to capitlizing on opportunities before you're tied down with real responsibilities (house payments, kids, marriage, etc). Chalk it up to spontaneity or whatever makes you feel free. Chalk it up to whatever lets you see the world with new eyes. What's it matter in the long run? You're only in your early to mid twenties once... This is primetime.

At least, that's a large part of my reasoning. I feel too young to be absorbed by the freakin rat race. I'm never going to make it through the glass ceiling anyways, so what the rush in getting there? I'm not jaded yet, dammit. I want to see the world naively while I can.

Adendum

And yet, I resist. I'm torn between identifying the resistance as reason or fear. Both are logical, both are probably accurate, but one of the two is more dominant.

Then there's the idealist in me, the part that screams: I want to do something that undeniably asserts my indivuiduality and vitality. Something that places me in a situation I've never been in so I can see myself for the first time again.

I've become too much a part of my surroundings, and unless I do something about it, I'll fade out. I'll wither and disappear. I'll become a gray and frail shadow of what I could be. When I'm old, I want to be entertained by my memories, not haunted by the vacccuum of routine. My fear is that I'll wake up one day and wonder why I even bothered.

If you were me:

You would feel a golden hue softly glowing, and warmth.
Flashing bright light, ice cold touches, pitch dark, confusion would be by you , but you would be the golden glow which slowly grows and dims.
You would smell cut grass and sawdust. You would sing sadly at times...
You would see oceans, mountains.
You would see waves of wheat looking weeds, golden in the sun like its healthy cousin.
You would feel alone in a beautiful place.
There would be moments of longing, and moments of peace.
There would be visions of snow falling from the night as you look up into it, the flakes lit bright as they come.
You would see horse gnawed fences and horses face to the ground, always just away.
You would hear nothing.
You would gaze into the sky often, only in brevity.
You would feel ability, and you would feel lack of it .
You would know that things wll be all right.
You would hesitate, but you would go.
You would feel.
You would feel love.
You would feel to cry sometimes, and you would feel to laugh.
You would feel wounds He suffered for you.
You would feel wounds you've caused others.
You would feel how much some love you, and wish you would feel how much you love them.
You would feel about little things and think little of big things and think deeply of all things.
You would think about glaciers and trees and life. You would love beauty.
You would be melancholy for its charm.
You would feel hope and it would come on the wings of a dove.
You would feel steel in your soul, covered by flesh and flesh inside it.

I let the iron rust on your machine.

I stood upon it, stamped my feet,
and watched water drip down
on your cool, calm world.

Only the clearest expression of my love, darling.
Only vivid honesty.

So large, sinking,
in a quiet place,
Sweetly filling holes...
sweetly
circuits
gently vibing
gently
in the holy dark
(vibing for me).

pretty metal eyes,
light behind them,
dark with depth,
will drip oil
when the rust
cankers them.

I tell you this
regretfully.
It was a beautiful piece
Of technology.

You walk each day, your bangs
in the breeze,
eyes turned skyward,
books in your arms;

I watch you, alone in the world
at the bus stop,
cold in morning gusts,
bundled tight
against groping old men of the snow.

You are an ember.
A quiet one, faithful, contributing
heat in the company of large coals.
You die alone.

What are you? Who?
The answer comes on the cusp of a whisper,
and is forgotten. You find
yourself again, in the same place.

You sit with your hands on your forehead,
Wrestling with being.

You are your own jury, you,
who sit at the cafeteria tables, teasing
each other and absorbing
each other. You
who walk sweetly in the path of duty, assured
of your place in the world. I see you. I know you.

You are no stranger to me, when you bury your face in a screen
or, when you look ahead, eyes steeled against me,
a potential source of pain or rejection or
disappointment.

I am your companion.

Slow plucked tune,
humming away in the back;
still. The air,

resonant in emptiness,
resolute and demanding,
relentless in silence,
somehow warm;

whose calm tendril wraps,
arms, in wisps and wafts,
invisibly hug me;
gentle, gently…

In great comfort, untroubled,
I recline on airliners; onward,
to California or,
to Mexico, or New Zealand.

No, its when
I see you happy under evening
shade in the arms
of the ones that you love, that I'm struck.

Or, when
you laugh, carefree,
like the wind
or a sheet on a line on the beach.

It's when
you meet me,
anticipation as
a glint in your eye in the sun,
a sparkle
from the star that shimmers
down to you
that I could be love.

With interest;
when you hold out hope for me,
rely on me,
yes, when you
want to
be with me I fear.

On happiness

it bubbles out of me like
a brook by a fawn in the forest

spilling over the hedges
flurrying, bouncing off the rocks
and sweeping down the
waterways, wildly flailing.

Exultant, spreading
through my being,
a wildfire heat,
searing the tips
of my dried reeds,

blackening them, of them,
building a fertile ground for
the trees to come

I am aware of the fleeting nature of flame,
how the light burns out.

On hope:

I sat in the company of friends, today,
I was loved,

but, the evening found me silent
on the horizon,
caught me, searching
the overcast skyline
seeking or, rather, dashing
myself against the clouds

I hung limp in the low light
damp, beneath the cloud cover.

There is no place
for a man of the sea,
a man of hours.

Perhaps, in the company of
angry schools, swarming, simmering
swelling in the depths,
a man of the sea, an urchin
man o war, steeped in brine,
and selfish.
will linger in the current,
moved, and moved, and moved.

I glide through the plankton fields,
the fertile plankton fields,
the clouds of living things,

on feeling overcast:

I'm caught in fleeting moments;
rain on a window I
wash away.

My eye's glimmer's
dulled by leaden clouds,
weighing down on me
onus added to my burden.

My face is the face
of an ox,
dull and desirable
for what strength it provides-
left to sit out in harsh weather.

I'm native
to inclement conditions.
It has not made me hearty.

I'm not the stallion
sought after,
yearned for;
not the sort that wars begin for;
none to die for me;
no, I'm found ghostly,
resting heavily,
by the road,
alone.

in the water
a gaunt boat slips
from the grasp
of displacement

below

the ghosts of old men tend to their aches,
preferring the comfort of wrecks to
the frenzy of the middle aged;
the productive people searching
for ways to escape
their common predicament.

The young
ghosts fuck off,
scaring schools of fish
and startling the wind above them,
sending it flying into oblivion,

if

I can be cliche for a minute
whose to say that
things fade in death?
perhaps they just slip from our view.
Life, if nothing else, feels constant.

Its left to the children
to sit, eyes ablaze, and greet the old
ship slipping, falling
like a feather falls,
through the water.

There is a curled bird,
being claimed
by the earth. The sun
breathes no life into it.

Its blackened beak is
bent into its wings,
snapped like twigs,
posed as though
it were preening eternally.

except for the morbid, and
the curious child,
there are ants.

My hand drifts downward,
a summer leaf
escaping from the confines
of the branch.

It flies elated, moved
by the breezes for a moment, apart
from anything, flush with
photosynthesis, infused with
life and free.

The moment is a life time.

it has forever, once fallen,
to reflect.

But reflection lasts as long as restlessness abates
and yearning returns, and aching,
longing inflames the limbs;

when its bleak and humid,
bleary sun beating down the spirits,
suffocating, smothering the fleeting sense
of hope that flickers;

when the worn out car, cankered, rusty,
a friend to the peeling picket fence patched
with chain link,
unforgiving and rough, yawns,
weeds scratching unabashedly
at its overexposed private parts,
vulgar and unkempt
does it cringe,

and look back at the branch,
once an anchor, a home, and feel again to be a part of it?

Does sadness drench its frail body?
Stung by awareness that
long before the living leaves fall,
it will be muddied, half eaten,
fading into the ground?
Where is solace for the leaf who escapes the branch?

I spun in circles
yesterday, and let my feet down
dangerously on the wet concrete.
(I left my shoes inside)

I'm focused on this keyboard, like a tv set,
glancing up in intervals,
occaisionally lifting my
eyes. I'm wrapped in my blanket, hunched over, on the floor,
shirt off, and tired. My eyelids
have sandpaper lining, soothed surpsrisingly, by friction.
and weight.

My hands are gentle, fraying on the cuticles,
fingernails trimmed and uneven,

My eyes are shy in the mirror, unless
I'm looking indirectly at them. Then, I stare for minutes.

Hours are almost fiction.
They slip away like a woman taking her leave.
They don't quite vanish, no, I do.

I am prone to wander. I stuimble off down the avenues of my great concrete city, my
massive metropolis, my ghost Cleveland, lonely. It has pigeons,
stirred by the occaisional pedestrian. There is a sky,
but all is quiet. The buildings are empty.
Maintained, well groomed gardens,
parks invite the avid, freewheeling lovers,
the balls to the breeze motherfuckers I despise,
and I welcome them. There's room,
for thousands, millions, maybe.

I see a gray paper in the cold gutter, washed over with water
and other liquid refuse gliding to the sewer, which leads the way to the nearby
river. Water has walkways, too. It wanders in the form of the cloud, and
I mimic it. You'll fiind one wrenching itself and pouring itself out when the air is harsh,
deeply drinking when over other bodies
of water.

I am a mockingbird
repeating only what I hear. I am no great God bird.
You won't likely find me in the air over
you. But, I am a bird, and I have wings.

On universal behaviors:

I am the yelping dog,
aware of his master, aware
of his home, yet prone
to run.

Vauge, like sunscreen wishing it wasnt

wasted on a place that doesnt see the sun,

on the sidewalk,

the street skin,

formed from the cells of those that once lived in it.

Entity, living,

not breathing,

Very, very ugly, my friend.

I love you. Leave me, dont go.

I see. And you. Fight. The undercurrent. Cunt.

I am. . .. . . modest redress. Is all I seek for

my wounds. They are like yours. The product of loving fists. The sort that would set you

straight if you could see where you were going. What do you see? Air. perhaps,

I see women eying me with desire thinking

to themselves that Im something worth fucking. Im not.

Wish they'd catch that at the first. They dont.

They do catch a hard glance, one of fear and hesitation, the sort

that's best suited for the enemy.

I am my enemy.

I am my enemy.

I twitched; this ursine fellow;

vile nod. Let it rip pieces off of you, peel you like old paint.

Eyelash crackling, snapping off like the edge of an icicle.

Its a knee jerk response. To fall apart, I think.

You walk each day, your bangs

in the breeze,

eyes turned skyward,

books in your arms;

I watch you, alone in the world

at the bus stop,

cold in morning gusts,

bundled tight

against groping old men of the snow.

You are an ember.
A quiet one, faithful, contributing

heat in the company of large coals.

You die alone.

What are you? Who?

The answer comes on the cusp of a whisper,

and is forgotten. You find

yourself again, in the same place.

You sit with your hands on your forehead,

Wrestling with being.

You are your own jury, you,

who sit at the cafeteria tables, teasing

each other and absorbing

each other. You

who walk sweetly in the path of duty, assured

of your place in the world. I see you. I know you.

You are no stranger to me, when you bury your face in a screen

or, when you look ahead, eyes steeled against me,

a potential source of pain or rejection or

disappointment.

I am your companion.