May 2012
2 posts
[mewithoutYou - Ten Stories: The Glossary]
The new album from mewithoutYou, entitled Ten Stories, is a concept album about a circus train crash and the dark and philosophical adventures of the animals that escape (or don’t) in the aftermath. Aaron Weiss uses typically detailed and mysterious lyricism, and thus I thought a glossary for the phrases and names of plants and animals and even fabrics that he throws at you might be valuable....
[chrysalis.]
Two years ago I told a friend of mine that I wanted to get a tattoo of a caterpillar. “Like Alice in Wonderland?” She asked me. “No. Like the Chrysalis process.” I was not surprised, nor should I have been, with her blank and confused expression. So I said to her in my best teacher voice possible “Let me explain…” There comes a point in every caterpillar’s life when the...
April 2012
6 posts
[the hardest job everyone thinks they can do -...
I used to be a molecular biologist. I spent my days culturing viruses. Sometimes, my experiments would fail miserably, and I’d swear to myself in frustration. Acquaintances would ask how my work was going. I’d explain how I was having a difficult time cloning this one gene. I couldn’t seem to figure out the exact recipe to use for my cloning cocktail.
Acquaintances would sigh...
[the art of wonder.]
i wonder how many times i have doubted myself. how many times i have had to stop and think, go back, rethink, rewind, undo. i wonder how many times i have let myself sit, much like i am doing now, and question every promise that has been made to me, every declaration of goodness, every incidence of faithfulness. [i wonder if God ever tires of my wondering.]
how long oh Lord, will i ask You to...
[burn.]
i appreciate your comforting warmth - blanket on a chilled night - rays of sun in november - toes in sand - hands interlocked.
i appreciate your comforting consistency - on time, right on time, just in the nick of time - timed perfectly to greet me at the door - stop before it’s too late - and we run out of things to share - secrets to keep - stories we forget to tell.
i appreciate your...
[questions and answers.]
If Jesus says that you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free, then why do I associate the truth, not with liberation, but with fear? Do I fear freedom? Or is it more so that I associate truth with a negative truth, with bad news, with disappointment? Have I thought of truth for so long as the truth of unfaithfulness, the truth of betrayal, the truth of lies, that I have forgotten...
[new mexico.]
i remember august in new mexico - the hot lightning storms in the afternoon, the smell of sage and fresh cut hay, the way the skyline faded into the distance as if the plains and mesas would never end. i remember drinking mountain water out of my grandpa’s tin cups, the way the irish wolfhound’s coarse fur felt under my small hands, the thrill of feeding jezebel (the hawk) raw meat at...
[posture.]
i hate having bad posture.
slumped shoulders bent over ever so slightly; a dull, numbing pain in my back, a constant reminder that i was not made to sit up tall, to stand straight, to hold my head up high. i often wonder if my bad physical posture is not, in some ways, reflective of the posture of my inner spirit. i wonder if the heaviness i feel in trying to lift my head, is not because i slept...
March 2012
4 posts
[the gym.]
So I don’t know if you’ve noticed….but, I’ve been working out lately. You know, getting “buff”. Getting my gym on. And, yes, I feel great. (Thank you for asking) I love it when my legs hurt so much that I can barely walk the next day, when I have to call my old roommate to come over because I can barely muster up enough strength to lift my arms high enough to get my sweatshirt off over my head....
[listening.]
The past two days I feel as though my body is dragging; slightly behind the intentions of my mind, my actions seem slow and somewhat lethargic. I toss and turn at night, unable to find rest, and instead, lay awake contemplating the heaviness of the night. The quiet pressing of the blankets upon my legs that I have only recently become consciously aware of. Incredible how you never actually...
[it is what it is.]
On days like this, days when the rain falls so softly against the windows that it sounds almost like the crackling of a dimming fire, days when the cold hardwood floors of my downtown apartment creak beneath me, days when I regret the iced coffee ordered, regret the cold against my tongue, the chill in my aching hands, on days like this it seems only natural to sit and reflect upon the...
“I am one of the searchers. There are, I believe, millions of us. We are not unhappy, but neither are we really content. We continue to explore life, hoping to uncover its ultimate secret. We continue to explore ourselves, hoping to understand. We like to walk along the beach, we are drawn by the ocean, taken by its power, its unceasing motion, its mystery and unspeakable beauty. We like forests...
September 2011
1 post
August 2011
8 posts
And then I felt sad because I realized that once people are broken in certain ways, they can’t ever be fixed, and this is something nobody ever tells you when you are young and it never fails to surprise you as you grow older as you see the people in your life break one by one. You wonder when your turn is going to be, or if it’s already happened.
-Douglas Coupland
[he never said "love and be loved".]
there’s only two things i have to do in life:
love and love.
sounds simple, yes, but the more stripped down it reveals itself to be, the more authentic we get, the more truth in our words…the greater challenge it becomes.
i am feeling challenged, and a little unprepared for “such a time as this”: this time, my time, our times shared…what if over time we forget?...
you…yes you. we are closer for the tears and the weight of all the years has not left us hollow. and at the end of a day that i will never forget, i sit and contemplate all of what you have said, of who we are: who i am, have been and am becoming. words spoken over me countless times take on new meaning. it’s as if i am hearing for the first time…or maybe now i just believe you....
“Sometimes I’m terrified of my heart; of its constant hunger for whatever it is...”
– Edgar Allen Poe
Why don’t you tell me that “if the girl had been worth having, she’d have waited for you?” No, sir, the girl really worth having won’t wait for anybody.
-F. Scott Fitzgerald
[mama said.]
“mama said there’d be days like this…mama said, mama said.
mama said there’d be days like this…mama said, my mama said.”
What mama never said was that days like this would come so often.
Those, sit in my kitchen and stare out the window as my coffee gets cold and I contemplate my very existence, days.
Those, sandals on my feet because the very notion of...
Writers write, and they write, and they go on writing, in some cases long after wisdom and even common sense have told them to quit. There are always plenty of reasons—good, compelling reasons, too—for quitting, or for not writing very much or very seriously. (Writing is trouble, make no mistake, for everyone involved, and who needs trouble?) But once in a great while lightning strikes, and...
July 2011
3 posts
[mockingbird.]
there is a restlessness in the air. it moves my breath and the trees to sing the sweetest of melodies. lifts the leaves from the ground, and one by one, with each breeze, they find a new home. and i find i am found. in the heavy breaths, in the empty nest, in the loss of sleep i am found. found cracked of shell, of feathers plucked. found less a swan and more a duck. a nest, a home, of sticks...
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the...”
– rainer maria rilke
March 2011
1 post
it’s been a while since i’ve been brave enough to sit down and write these words to you…you…yes you. seven weeks ago i bought a freshly bound stack of paper in hopes that i would fill the pages with idioms and reminiscences, re-connect myself to the roots, and somehow discover some dormant truths that had been tucked away in the back of my closet in a box with a single...
December 2010
1 post
[even now.]
It doesn’t always work like I’ve planned it I’ve seen a lot of good things, a lot of things have been out of my hands Even when I don’t understand it We have all got choices to make And this one is mine Even now, here’s my heart God Seems like all You do is so hidden Sometimes I’m led to wonder are You working at all? But even in the darkness I’m listening...
November 2010
1 post
[there may yet be]
there is hope for a tree cut down
but what hope is there for neglected roots
desperate for one drop of rain
what satisfaction for leaves ragged with time
and the ceaseless feasting of animals.
what solitude, what repose
for branches sunken beneath the weight
of you and i.
oh, the burden that this tree must bear.
a giving tree with nothing left to give
names carved of lovers come and...
October 2010
1 post
[preview of tomorrow's poem i'm doing at open mic]
they say nothing good happens after midnight. well, i beg to differ. you see, the first time i met you was 3:17 am with my head on my pillow and my heart in my hands, and the weight of my sheets was the weight of the world crushing down on me.
and i’m pretty sure i was crying.
not one of those body shaking, tears pouring, snot running down my nose kinds of cries…no. this was one of...
September 2010
4 posts
“the very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. and the...”
– barbara kingsolver
he said [you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free], but i never thought that free would be the truest essence of me. nothing holding me back. nothing keeping me stuck in a place of darkness. nothing but light ahead and an open path. all i ever really wanted was to walk in the truth. to walk in the light. to not live in this darkness for another moment. you see…i used to...
[bittersweet.]
‘The idea of bittersweet is changing the way I live, unraveling and re-weaving the way I understand life. Bittersweet is the idea that in all things there is both something broken and something beautiful, that there is a moment of lightness on even the darkest of nights, a shadow of hope in every heartbreak, and that rejoicing is no less rich even when it contains a splinter of sadness....
August 2010
1 post
[time passes. even when it seems impossible. even when each tick of the second hand aches like the pulse of blood behind a bruise. it passes unevenly, in strange lurches and dragging lulls, but pass it does. even for me.]
for the first time in a long time…i have lost track of time. you see i used to know exactly where i was going, when i wanted to be there…with my five-year plan...
May 2010
12 posts
[farewell ms. dunton]
in less than twelve hours the exams will have been taken, the essays graded, the grades submitted, and i will say goodbye to my students one last time. i am overwhelmed with emotion, as is evident by the tears that are collecting in pools beneath my eyes and streaming down my face. some people will spend their entire lives trying to accomplish something even close to what i have been able to do...
[heel-to-toe.]
sometimes in life we are confronted with the option:
to the left or to the right.
other times we come to find that there is only one path
and whether we prefer to travel by day or night
regardless of what we encounter along the way
the only choice we have is the first step.
backwards or forwards?
fear of moving, first few steps, heel-to-toe.
i long for left or right, to swerve to the side
...
[sea-weed. part one.]
i guess i shouldn’t be surprised that i feel this way.
i guess i shouldn’t be surprised that with each new day
i am beginning to feel less and less like…my [old] self.
nothing is familiar.
nothing is comfortable.
i don’t even recognize my own heart beat anymore.
ba BOOM. ba BOOM. ba ba ba BOOM.
there is no rhythm,
no comforting melody
just an erratic and off,...
there are so many times in life when i feel as if i am doing nothing more than trying to reconcile my present circumstances with how i wished things would be or imagined they would have been. i become trapped in this cycle of feeling as if everything i do is nothing because it is not what i really wish to be doing. today i began to realize if you don’t get excited about...
i love [never fails] you self-less-ish-ly.
i love you self-less-ish-ly. i truly believe it is impossible to love selflessly and that is why i say i love you self-less-ish-ly. none of us ever want to admit that “what’s in it for me?” is what we all think at one point or another…but honestly i’m not sure if i could love you without taking into account me.
i don’t blame myself; you see, from the moment...
[reap:sow]
we all well know…we’re going to reap what we sow. we all well know what kind of crops are gonna grow. and grace, we all know, takes the place of what we owe. so why not let’s forgive everyone, everywhere, everything, all the time. we all well know…we’re going to reap what we sow. -aaron weiss
you are going to reap what you sow and those will be your crops to till...
“don’t be like so many writers, don’t be like so many thousands of people who...”
– charles bukowski
[i should have majored in art.]
it’s days like these when i hate being a teacher. you walk up to your classroom with a million things on your mind none of which begin with romeo or juliet, wishing you could have rolled over and gone back to bed, and at least given yourself a chance to catch up with life and catch your breath. you sit down at your desk and look at the long list of things left to accomplish, scoffing at the...
[i woke up with two black eyes.]
it was the result of violence inflicted upon myself.
you see, amidst the thoughts of the past three
years of my life and how i refuse to let history
repeat itself this time…
i cried.
for the first time in a long time.
it started calm, nice and slow
but before i could stop the rivers began to flow
and as i struggled to catch my breath
he whispered in my ear, i’m holding the...
[bless this mess.]
in the words of david bazan: [through a darkened mirror i have seen my own reflection and it makes me want to be a better man…after another drink. God, bless the man at the crossroads. God, bless the woman who still can’t sleep. God, bless the history that doesn’t repeat.]
i find it interesting, this paradox we call humanity. the first to stand up and say, “oh, i would...
[everything is all right.]
anxiety is attempting to take over me.
i’m not sure if it’s the three cups of coffee
or the constant thoughts of “this is not the way things are supposed to be”
but i think i can feel my heart beat down in my feet.
[my hands are trembling.]
i am never more aware of my own body
then when i seem to have lost control of it’s...
April 2010
1 post
March 2010
2 posts
[one hundred and forty beats per minute]
i am still a broken heart.
i am three beats when there ought to be one.
i am a skip and a jump in this race to the end.
veins pumping, lines blurring.
and all i can see is your face.
cold blood coursing through warm veins.
i suck in empty air.
struggling for each breath.
the sound of my heart like a heavy drum
drowning out the faintness of your voice.
in this moment i tip my hat to...
“rejoice in your growth, in which you naturally can take no one with you, and be...”
– rainer maria rilke
February 2010
1 post
he said to me...
i love you endlessly. truly, madly, deeply, with every part of me, with every breath in me, you are my sanity. you complete me. he said to me…i love you perfectly, continuously, unceasingly, for eternity, with every penny, i…will love you. i will love you as an extension of me, for all to see, with every fiber of my being you will always be the better half of me, the yang to my ying,...
musings on [the pursuit of God by a.w. tozer]
[to have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul’s paradox of love, scorned indeed by the too-easily-satisfied religionist, but justified in happy experience by the children of the burning heart.] - a.w. tozer
complacency in relationships - within the context of romance, within the context of community - has left a significant void in those around me, and within myself. i believe...
