removal

whilst eating toast and thinking about the new day, the radio plays glistening pop. i hear not the melody, but words behind everything.

the possibility of negation requires the actuality of confirmation, and vice versa. if one cannot confirm, then the negation is false; if one cannot negate, then the confirmation is dangerous.

something needs to be packed, something needs to be switched off. something is here and something is missing.

a lie is a lie is a big lie

i am about to go to bed, and i have done nothing significant today. although i did fall over.

whilst walking through the streets, i thought that i should take a shortcut across the inviting grass as it lazed unused under midday sun because i hate to see things without a purpose. so it became my purpose to walk upon this grass, just for a moment, and then the grass’ purpose to host this definite act, a charitable gift on my part, i feel.

i reckoned without the certainty of public ridicule however. i cannot leave the house without becoming the subject of public ridicule; it is a fate of sorts if such a foolish thing exists. ridicule has become my vocation.

and so of course, eighteen strides into my giving journey in which i donated a reason to this redundant patch of virgin green, i fell. not simply the gentle collapse of an ankle upon a misjudged curb, nor a cautious trip, but an acrobatic feat with pirouettes, falling sky and blood, a desperate trip full of sad lies, to an enraptured audience. as i shuffled into the shade and back onto the path, i noticed that my trousers were minutely torn and my leg was bleeding slightly, not a cut as such but an unnoticed, painless graze, which looked like paint.

i drove home, with shame trailing my path until i reached the door and entered the house. inside was my sister who commented immediately on my torn trousers, and the shame and the embarrassment and the general irritation that accompanies the unfurling of events came into view and were laid before me.

so i lied.

“i fell on glass running from a large dog.”
“really?”
“yes.”

i don’t know why. she didn’t even believe me, just like you don’t.

not the largest falsity you’ve ever encountered (certainly not mine, i have heard i love you uttered urgently over sad lips) but enough. it was a construction, aimed at solving confusion, it was a little fabrication, some window-dressing to hide the embarrassment that had added rose to my palate. sprinkle some glass and a canine into the situation, and it makes the whole situation a lot easier to swallow because most people don’t have to put up with the same things i have to. most people can’t fall over nothing and cut themselves on fresh air. and i always like to make a story of things.

like the other day, when i was walking along the road, and i needed a coin for something but i didn’t have one, and then i saw one at the end of the road from quite a distance. as i approached i congratulated myself on my luck and eyesight when, from nowhere, a fat man with no shirt bolted from an alley way, looked furtively up and down the street, picked up the coin and ran off. i never told everyone about that.

but that was a worthy story, unlike this incident in the streets. it disappointed me. i felt as though, at the very least, if something that unnerving was going to happen, it (and i) deserved a better beginning and a better end, so i injected the story with glass and a dog. there is nothing bad about this, i simply hate missed potential, the situation had so much ambition and although my actions were strictly confined to the realms of ordinary, i made a lie that rose to the occasion.

and that’s all stories are, that’s all writing is–making lies that rise to the occasion, that perform on the big day, excel under pressure. and so perhaps the blander the event, the more inventive the lie, the better the writer.

i can now go to bed.

the morning breeze remembers last night

a strange infection of words
pushed through until three in the morning

night goes past, early
according to the rising light
who disguises the day’s intentions
with its early start
waking the everyone into early retirement
and possibly the long drive home

so this is my voice.
tired, melancholic and excited, without reason.

bed(room)

all through the night,
they undid every knot,
every button on every shirt
unpopped.
they stood like flowers in plant pots with nothing
but goosebumps.
two human beings: bare-skinned,
threadbare, comfortable.
nothing was spoken but everything was cozy
reflecting the smiles off each other
until the sun shined into the window blinds.
it’s morning.

word of the day

my favorite word today is subtle, because its letters and sounds are just that.

a tale of two poems

i.
paling in and out of the dawn
everything amplified and ahead
of us, we are beyond ourselves
for a moment, but must retreat
because that was the truest thing
anyone has ever said.

ii.
the pitched light of fiction faded
with the registered temperature
as the iconic populations (in spirit, at least)
hung limp like an exhausted dandelion
exhaled from a storm grate.
stories streamed past my eyes that evening
with a furious reason, my interior
too hungry to punctuate the indigenous words
as my verbs, reunited under the dim light
of the sun’s beaten flame, slowly
drained the narrative keg dry, slowly.

ballistics

i can’t find my pen.

and if i did find it the ink probably would have run out. and the paper that i went to write on would be all screwed up. no doubt that my hand is too shaky today. it would be illegible.

unlegible? illegible. i just have no grasp of the foundations of language.

there is no way into what i feel. what’s the word? what was i going to say? it’s on the tip of my tongue. there is no way into what i feel.

but there may be a way out. writing is an exit wound.

at a distance greater than two feet: this is too far for either soot or burning propellant to travel, so the wound margins are clean, with neither fouling nor stippling. classically, the entrance wound has a rim of abrasion surrounding the wound, because the projectile drags the surrounding skin into the wound a bit, abrading it along the way. the exit wound lacks this abrasion, unless the victim was braced against a wall or other solid object that may secondarily abrade the margin of the exit wound as the projectile penetrates the skin and pushes it into the wall.

back to the wall then.

it was a nice night

it wasn’t much of a killing, not like on television and i didn’t know someone had died until someone told me and i’m not even sure if he did.