There is a tunnel at the end of the light,
A path through the void, a final heartbeat
Suspended, neither dead nor alive,
But something else.
“No” is a raindrop’s death in concrete,
The emptiness that sprouts from nothing.
“No” is a map, the step-by-step
Directions to nowhere.
I’ve sent him into the bowels of the earth, the miner.
I, with my appetite for the shiny and the new.
I, with the luxury to look away.
His dusty lungs are a hacking rebuke:
How much does a thousand-dollar computer cost?
Image credit: Mattrobs
“Write, damnit. Write.” This what the skywriter—that thorn in the poet’s side—has demanded of me, the ephemeral letters splattered across my mental sky. I am seated in my office. It is a lazy Friday; a long weekend is but hours from beginning. For the first time in weeks, my calendar is nearly empty, my inbox dealt with. I should be happy, relieved, relaxed…and yet I’m not. The monitor mocks me; the cool breeze outside tempts me. And as those grammatical clouds dissipate and disappear, a starker question is chiseled into the very folds of my brain: am I doing enough?
Let me back up. Around the age of 15 I was introduced to Romantic poetry and philosophy, that exuberant, excessive, rebellious and moody brand of living that holds so much appeal for a restless and idealistic young man. As the years progressed and the ideals of beauty, justice, truth and authenticity permeated my neurons and infiltrated my veins, a profound frustration began to emerge: all those around me cautioned that, with age, the ideals would lose their appeal, as though they were a tasty treat, now digested, relegated to a fate of excretion. What’s more, I was told that they would be replaced with “realism,” “pragmatism,” “cynicism” and other “isms,” save for the pleasurable ones: “orgasm,” “mysticism,” and so on.
After intending to compile and (self) publish a book of poems and prose pieces written between the ages of 16 and about 24, I have finally done so. I hope that someone will enjoy a poem or two!
How do I decide: essay or letter,
free verse or sonnet; what it is I want
to say to myself, to you; if it’s better
to have or to hold. Alone, I go gaunt
It must be Spring.
The begonias are vomiting diesel
Again,
Leaf blowers are whining like scapegoats
Condemned to die
Again
In a swirl
Of garbage and leaves,
And I don’t feel like being alive today.
Time corrodes the clock,
The clock devours the day,
The ocean destroys the dock
‘Till the vessel floats away.
On my cross-country bike trip
20 years ago I was on the cusp of turning 10, and I remember virtually nothing about that; 10 years ago I was months away from turning 20, and I was too self-absorbed to contemplate the future; and now I am 29 and may be too absorbed in the day-to-day to really remember what I was like and who I was in the past two decades. What’s got me thinking about that un-medicated, chaotic and doubt-riddled person is a book I just finished titled Living With a Wild God: A Nonbeliever’s Search for the Truth about Everything, by Barbara Ehrenreich. In the book, Ms. Ehrenreich uses the journal she kept during her teenage years as a springboard from which to revisit the doubts and dreams she had during that tumultuous time.
As soon as I finished reading—just hours after I began—I decided to look back through my own journal…hundreds of pages of frantic writing covering the years 2002 – 2005, when I was 18-21. Before I delve into this, let me just review some facts about me during that time. First, I was around 7 years from finally being diagnosed as, and treated for, mild bipolar disorder; as a result, I found myself jostling back and forth from unbearable bliss to the kind of depression that slows your synapses to a crawl. Second, I kept this journal while I was an undergraduate at California State University Northridge (CSUN,) meaning that for a time I was living at my parent’s house in Tarzana, CA., and for a year I lived in Granada, Spain (studying abroad), and for several months I rode across the United States on my bicycle and then fought to intergrate that experience in whatever came next. Third, I spent much of my time reading about Buddhism and philosophy; delving into the works of Romantic poets; and contemplating the nature of my existence and the meaning of it all. And finally, I was a colossal pain-in-the-ass: self-righteous, pompous, filled with illusions of grandeur, judgmental, and so on.
Photo credit: kowitz
My favorite movie, The Dark Knight, starts off with a riveting bank heist. The Joker leads a group of robbers who, thanks to the Joker’s machinations, kill each other, one-by-one, as the job progresses. By the time the scene is done all involved, with the exception of the Joker, are dead, and the groundwork for the film’s moral battle between the Batman and the Joker is laid.
I have watched The Dark Knight, from start to finish, multiple times. I love everything about it: the dialogue, the dark, moody lighting, the plot, the acting. And perhaps because of my familiarity with the movie, something occurred to me the last time I sat down to enjoy it: never do we see blood spilled from those that are shot or beaten to death. Each murder is strangely antiseptic, cleaner than murder ought to be, or is.
I am the Founder & CEO of Capital Good Fund, a nonprofit social venture seeking to tackle poverty through financial services. I am also a writer, poet, cyclist, and avid reader. Enjoy my blog!