The Sprawling Nimbus

Save Lay My Rifle Down (Previously Recorded)

2011-12-02T11:46:00.002-08:00

A few questions for you...how...why...

What the pools mean in your face
How I want to dive in but have no problem resisting
Why so many words come to mind

So when you come around
It's so special. Like an angel dropping by
To say hello and drink some tea.

Why you have those eyes
Because they're so alive
It's disturbing that they aren't meant for me.

See? (Previously Recorded)

2011-12-02T11:46:00.001-08:00

Clear face
I see you first
Before you do

Clear sky
Too far away
Why I cry

Clear touch
Yes you did
I felt it

Clear aaaaah
He just kissed him
"I can't"

Clear tone
Nelling the end
It's done

Clear fate
I won't die
I won't

Clear lie
It's my lie
I won't

To John Smith, Love Pocahontas (Previously Recorded)

2011-12-02T11:43:00.001-08:00

My feet mash down dead pine needles
On your face

No really
I mean to be that blunt

Covering your memory
God it smells good
A smell you can taste
A smell you can drink

Binding your future
Freeing mine up

Running through an army of dark tree trunks
Your face under each bound
Thanks for the support.

(K) pareve (Previously Recorded)

2011-12-02T11:41:00.001-08:00

I close the door
Lock, relock
How locked can I lock it

I shut windows
Dust is dangerous
Still water, Legionaires'

I paste the cracks
With my knees
Bees knees
With melting wax
Slippery sheets and pleats

I close my eyes
With contacts in
And falling flakes
My path to make

Empty Hope (Previously Recorded)

2011-12-02T11:25:00.000-08:00

I was cleaning and I found an old diary. Moleskine. I remember it costing a bit. Read through it, and it speaks for itself:

January 1, 2004

Austin, TX- Laying with S watching VH-1. I'm looking at a sexy patch of skin and he doesn't know. S told me this'll be a big year (which I hope it is) and he said he wants to help me get what I want and be where I wanna be. His faith in me is so scary - like nothing I've faced. It poured out of him last night when he was drunk and now I'm beginning to see it in him all the time - to always see that warm, wet smile and the mad hope in his eyes.

January 2, 2004

::ELVIS LIVES sticker on the page::
Austin, TX- Sitting here while S is outside. Went to see Cold Mountain. I said it was poorly directed but I liked it. The characters were great. LA is void of character. S and I spent the day with Sammy, a friend from NU. Sammy's brother passed away a few months ago. He seems to be doing great. All in all today was full of ponderances of death and love. Is S the love of my life? If not, what will our relationship become? He's my big keeper right now - the one thing in my life that I've found and worked for, that keeps me safe, that I want for permanent.

January 3, 2004

DFW- Met S's parents - harmless!! Sitting across from a girl I swear is slowly turning into a zombie. S and I had a tearful talk last night along the lines of the end of my last entry. Amazingly we were on the same page - feeling regret for something that hasn't happened yet. We talked about death, dying alone, regret, hurt, goodness - a laundry list. As he cried I just held him. He does not cry. And, over night, the most astonishing dream. I'm trying so hard not to give words to how present and naked we see each other.

January 4, 2004

Los Angeles, CA- Back. Is it all lost so fast? I haven't even showered yet, and when I do, believe me it will be scouring. I'm trying not to live too much in anticipation of the next few days. I'm starting - no I DO see now how much I've been living in the service of others when I have so much to take care of. I see a more muscled and active man emerging through my melting skin. This year will be a story to tell. I can feel it. Mrs. Corral, 9th Grade English teacher says to keep your mind on the story and take fewer commas. "When in doubt, leave it out!"

January 5, 2004

West Hollywood, CA- Taking a moment out of cleaning to reflect on my depression - well, my depression and how S deals with it. What I'm wondering is how much does it matter that he doesn't have a natural ability to handle me. That's unanswerable.
When I'm depressed, I feel like I've never been happy. It's only later that I feel some levity and remember the joys of life. I am noticing though that my demeanor greatly improved with on & a half Buspar.

January 7, 2004

Weho- Played a lot of Prince of Persia today. What good can be taken from that. Well, you can't do it every day, but I got a ton of stress relief.
I discovered today why I loved creating in college. I knew the general safe structure of putting on a college show. So, I leapt head-first into it, but it was still safe.
"Nosebleed" ceases to be interesting when I stop taking chances and stop jumping in head-first.

OKEY- a few blank pages here now while some bad stuff was going on.

January 18, 2004

A lot has happened in the last while. I'm no longer with S, but we slept together last night! I've tried to like a few unlikeable guys. I was set to move out when I realized I got a good thing goin'.
"Matt, you know you're a really awesome guy. I've never met anyone like you. The way you think is incredible. If I were available I'd snatch you up." -Mardi
"If anyone gets to know you, they'll fall in love with you." -S (ed.: HOW IRONIC ergh)

January 19, 2004

I'm about to get a well-deserved sleep as I've spent most of the day cleaning and running errands. There's a lifetime of work to be done to make a life - to make a home. What about our generation drives us to evolve the collective consciousness - to expand society? There's nothing so poetic as Thoreau, or so rebellious, in this yawning question: Why not live simply? Yet, we wait for our deepest purpose to surface. We exist in waiting - we stave off futility with an empty hope.

AND FOLKS - that's when I stopped journaling.

Purple Scribbles (Previously Recorded)

2011-12-02T10:56:00.001-08:00

I.

Can I write anything that will be interesting at all to anyone if I know nothing about what I love but only what I hate and can I ever be happy if my relationships with people exist in degrees of my hate for them and the expectations that I believe they have for me even though most of that is decided beforehand by me and will only stand to be proven right never disproved or created anew. If I'm striving to stop striving and to let myself grow in my own unique energy in this world I have to stop creating the world with my brain. There is no room for love - even here where I hate and reject my brain and my uncontrolled expectations. At least I don't hate words. Everything sort of flies and sticks to the + or - side of the pole and nothing can live in between without freakin' out. I have a persecution complx and nothing valuable comes out of it. Created obstacles lead to bullshit. The true obstacles come unasked for and if I want obstacles so much why do I try and put them up. No, I don't mean that - what I mean is why do I get so angry at the ones I don't create.

II.

Don't you laugh - don't you fucking laugh. Don't - you are out of hand. You have no idea how stupid you look.

III.

Forces of nature - Dad's employers. What is my great enemy right now?

IV.

The mood of all the people in that room across the hall

V.

The final cataract has burst a crack
Across its concrete face and looms above
A peopled village while it drips its threat -
A rusty fan of mildew from the flow
Of trickling river water breaking through
A full five feet of labor made and true
Protection from the churning river held
Against it's Godmade path

VI.

Who puts the pebbles and the sticky flecks
Of fuzz across my hardwood floor to plague
My life with endless pauses taken out to pick
The sticky bit thats burroughed in its own
Made enclave in the callous belly of
My angry foot, for me to totter on
One leg in hot frustration anxious bent
On locating the bit to minimize
The time I spend so I can put the foot
Back down before I fall.

Steinbeck

2011-12-02T10:48:00.000-08:00

A sad soul can kill quicker than a germ.
-john steinbeck

There are some among us who live in rooms of experience we can never enter
-john steinbeck

One can find so many pains when the rain is falling.
-john steinbeck

It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.
-john steinbeck

Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass.
-john steinbeck

We are lonesome animals. We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say -- and to feel -- ''Yes, that's the way it is, or at least that's the way I feel it. You're not as alone as you thought."
-john steinbeck

It doesn't matter that Cathy was what I have called a monster. Perhaps we can't understand Cathy, but on the other hand we are capable of many things in all directions, of great virtues and great sins. And who in his mind has not probed the black water?
-john steinbeck

A woman can change better'n a man. A man lives, sorta, well, in jerks. Baby's born and somebody dies, and that's a jerk. He gets a farm or loses it, and that's a jerk. With a woman, it's all in one flow like a stream. Little eddies and waterfalls, but the river it goes right on. A woman looks at it that way.
-john steinbeck

Raised by Wolves (Previously Recorded)

2011-12-02T10:47:00.000-08:00

Broke the bounds of doors,

Letting in the earth;

Barefoot,
cut toe on a saw made for singing.

Dust pneumonia:

Bronchial spasms in peace
under California Stars in michigan,

Cold lake calling for our deaths,
raw knuckles,
midnight winter ride.

Jesus was in Germany.

And change came cheap

While you were here
in my room
on the floor
with four stereos
from four corners,
far reaches,
Flaming Lips,
tobacco stained.

Bowled with beer,

Saw through smoke,

Smelled the dirt.

Never safe when fear crawls the wall.

Next to you,

Touching shoulders,

In free and reckless suicide books,
our every fiber
wrapped in a leotard,
dancing to taped thought.

And some not-me

Writes the book every day;

Sets the irony
in weather
and mishaps,
since He's a better poet than i.

Reaching,
while i bite so hard to pull him back to that lazy borderless freedom.

Always 'Bout To (Previously Recorded)

2011-12-02T10:44:00.000-08:00

It's all gone tissue paper
Crispy snaps gone sour with a tear
A high house of it
Standing on its weightlessness

And memories have such nothing to do with this
That they're sitting on a beach under a different night
One that ends before mine begins and stars meant to share

Dirt meant love
Courage gave me breadth
To breathe
And porches were used
Feet were up

And sometimes my lips look full and expressive
Knock you down
Make you do

And sometimes my lips have gone into my head
To sort things out
And drip----->they go

I have this drawer full of tissue
Stacked perfect
It's all they let me build with
And a roll of paper towels
for me to guide the wet pile off the edge---->

Cuz my houses go 'way
With cancer and missing children
The revocation of uncle-hood

Thrum Thrum

2010-06-14T16:49:00.000-07:00

Thrum thrum -

The drumming brum of humdrum numb and columb crumbs tumbling some down my tummy tum.

I am here on my bum -

Crumbs stuck in a clump in the cusp of my lips

I am licking and smacking at tumbling crumbs.

Some get sucked up down my throat to my lungs

Where they dry out my eyes with their buttery size!

In my nose in the back there they dance and they scratch

Squish a tear through a crumb in the crook of my eye 'til I'm covered - so covered -

That they gather around in an army thrust deep twixt the couch and my bum.

They will climb up the crack and come in that way, too,

But I just can't stand up! I just can't!

I'm not stuck; I'm not fat; I just can't!

I am here right here now this couch is where I am and I will not be here if I move somewhere else so I don't!

I just sit and I cannot get up I just can't I just can't I just can't I just can't I just can't.

...for a time

2010-06-14T16:40:00.000-07:00

Can you please ask the fleas to ease me please?

I cry all the time from a thorn in my spine;

If I switch to an itch of a scratch with my time

Then the pain from the thorn in my spine is in vain

While the fleas ease the pain for a time.

Fountain of Remorse

2009-08-30T21:32:00.001-07:00

It's too late at night for me to muse without devolving into unintelligible drivel, but I just wanted to express a thought: it is so hard to choose the right thing to do for yourself.

After making that choice, though, what then? Is it worth dwelling on the wrongness? Shouldn't one avoid giving undue weight to the consequences? A great teacher once taught me that, without knowing it, we are often holding a gun to our own head. Literally, a level of life-or-death pressure is imposed on ourselves: What will we do? Will we get by? Is this the end? Perform! Perform!

So, of course, it often unlocks the door to contentment when we tenderly tell ourselves, "Put the gun down, my love."

It doesn't matter if you made a wrong decision. And, apologies, to yourself or to others, are not a surrender, they are active expressions of love. No matter what you are facing, you will come out okay. You may, in fact, be okay right now.

Light a candle and hope that it glows...

2009-08-30T10:51:00.000-07:00

Check out the brilliant Lea Michele in this preview for the Fall Series, Glee.

Quite a turn from the role that she created in Spring Awakening off/on-Broadway, a musical adaptation of an 1891 German tragi-comedy (that errs on the side of tragi-) by Frank Wedekind. Fox Studios having aired the pilot as a "special" (remember those?) earlier in the summer, and after a 10-city promitional tour, this show has already gained an all-out cult following. I'm looking forward to drinking the Kool-Aid.

And now a swift turn to the poetic, little excerpt-lets from the mentioned Spring Awakening, music by Duncan Sheik, lyrics by Steven Sater:

Where I go,
When I go there,
No more memory any more,
Only men on distant ships,
Women with them swimming with them to shore,

Where I go,
When I go there,
No more whispering any more,
Only hymns upon your lips,
A mystic wisdom rising with them to the shore...

Where I go,
When I go there,
No more shadows any more,
Only men with golden fins,
The rythm in them rocking with them to shore,

Where I go,
When I go there,
No more weaping any more,
Only in and out your lips,
The broken wishes washing with them to shore...

Love me, just a bit,
We'll wander down, where the winds sigh...

My demeanor of late has been heavily influenced by one question: Will my attitude/my actions further my way to a happier life? Will saying the thing I'm about to say take a step in that direction? All of this being coloured by an enormous amount of work to do at the ol' job - which I sincerely don't mind, and find enjoyable.

What I am butting up against is the percieved limitations of my control over my current circumstances. There are many philosophies that address this time-long question...from religiosos to nihilists the essence remains:

And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you. - Matthew 17:20

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired. - Franz Kafka

A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others. - Ayn Rand

There are no facts, only interpretations. - Friedrich Nietzsche

Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination. - Immanuel Kant

Apply yourself both now and in the next life. Without effort, you cannot be prosperous. Though the land be good, You cannot have an abundant crop without cultivation. - Plato

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate,Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. - Nelson Mandela

And two other quotes on different notes, that are inspiring me right now:

Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old. - Franz Kafka

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. - Plato

Yet bizarrely, the thing that inspires me most, is that, in lives as short or shorter than mine, such development of thought and philosophy was achieved.

A Valediction Forbidding Mourning

2009-08-22T12:00:00.001-07:00

The turn of a year is marked for me by the start of school, although I haven't been in a classroom for a couple of years now. I know the bus from the Metro to work will now be packed with awkward teens, sitting uneasily, each inhabiting their own twisted sense of a niche in a bloated and fickle microcosm. I am strongly empathetic, and all of that immaturity in one place really makes me feel...well...immature.

See, I'm starting to learn that parts of me are stunted. I think we all have that problem in our own special way. Certain aspects of our daily modus operandi are rooted in what Alanis Morissette has accurately pegged as our "precious illusions." (Though she is the self-proclaimed "Queen of Malapropism"...although I thought Jewel wore that crown.)

That being said, I continue to try and define...or diagram...for myself, what exactly the process of self-reflection and self-correction entails. How does one find and focus on something "wrong" with oneself without developing a negative opinion of oneself? Meshing the two, prooves particularly perilous when self loathing happens to be one's drug of choice.

I do, however, think that it is important for me to concentrate on this lesson/exploration. It has been my general practice in my life to find a mantra to match a lesson; for now that will be "build a happy life."

A mantra can be very much like a key that opens a door. When I look at that simple statement, "buld a happy life," its tennets seem sound, and I think anyone would be hard pressed to find something wrong with living life by those words. In fact, I can think of a certain grandmother who seemed to have lived by those very words.

I Keep On Lovin' You

2009-08-22T11:05:00.000-07:00

(Ronnie Dunn, Terry McBride - writer of, among many other things, "If You See Him/If You See Her")

Love takes the patience of Job, that's what my momma always said,

Faith is the belief in something more than what you know, that's what the good book says,

You've got to play the cards you've got, who knows what fate is holdin',

At times you gotta go without knowing where you're goin',

That's why I keep on lovin' you,

I keep on lovin' you,

Through the baby-don't-leave-me's and never-will-again's and I-promise-to's,

I keep on lovin' you,

Lord knows we've had our share of fights, our sleepless nights, our ups and downs,

We've had plenty and then some of baby-i'm-gone's and turnarounds,

Sometimes I swear it might be easier to throw in the towel,

Someday we're gonna look back and say "Look at us now."

That's why I keep on lovin' you,

I keep on lovin' you,

Through the baby-don't-leave-me's and never-will-again's and I-promise-to's,

I keep on lovin' you,

Through the I-take-it-back's, I-didn't-mean-it-like-that's, I'd-never-hurt-you's,

Oh, I keep on lovin' you,

That's why I keep on lovin' you,

I keep on lovin' you,

Through the baby-don't-leave-me's and never-will-again's and I-promise-to's,

I keep on lovin' you,

Through the I-take-it-back's, I-didn't-mean-it-like-that's, I'd-never-hurt-you's,

Oh, I keep on lovin' you.

Oops

2008-07-26T05:43:00.000-07:00

Something very precious died;

I did not clean its room.
I slept inside its bed at night;
I dreamt inside its tomb.

I moved away as time went by,
But kept a tiny thread
Put inside of my pants each day:
A piece of what was dead.

Today I woke to find the thread
Was lost; completely gone.
The past with it; all hope with it.

EDIT: I'm whiting this out. Highlight it to read it, but it's so dark and defeated, I really don't care for it.

but shhh!

2008-06-30T14:54:00.000-07:00

Again;
You're there again.
I blink, you're there again.
I sneeze; still there
Again, again.

Don't wait;
You're there again.
You won't,
Again;
I love again.

Inside the rusty nails fall from a trap door and floods pour down but shhh!

Again;
You smile again.

I lean so hard on that smile it nearly snaps in two but shhh!

You're back.
You're back (again).
A huggle trap again.
I'll read, but no,
I'll sleep again.

Never slept so well; never had backup; never had faith 'til now but shhh!

Again;
The car again.
I'm mad, you're mad again:
Like family
Again.

My heart may be something... (previously recorded)

2008-04-14T21:58:00.001-07:00

My heart may be something that lies cradled in the soft crook of the Indiana dunes
Outside the flashlight circle of the Door County woods at night
Hiding with the gray faceless men in the birchwood trees,

Or between my toes stuck on a wet Bermuda grass blade
Pressed by the crumbling street into the soles of my wrinkled feet,
Or clinging to my thighs, matted under sandy swim trunks;

Could be in the plastic yellow wings of a hook-skewered grasshopper
Or on the flit of a feather-soft mosquito blown from my nose
Fizzing between my eyes at the dry end of a palm frond string.

My self confidence, I know, is daisy green
Slipping with a squeak off the hard edge of my desk
Splashing across my new black shoes and dripping down my thin socks
Spreading me out into the world,

But my heart, I know, swims in the thick air of a hot Floridian night
And you can't go there just by missing.

Citric Acid (previously recorded)

2008-04-11T20:23:00.000-07:00

One end of me held in your teeth
Split and sliding over your buck smirk;
The other pinched in your dirty fingers
Nonchalantly bruised.

A twisted orange peel:
With sticky juices dripping down your chin;
Down your wrist,

Your mouth always makes me cockeyed,
Looking two ways at once

Then I drop
Inertly uncurling
My soft white flesh left touching itself.

La Tempête Commence

2008-04-11T19:26:00.000-07:00

I rest my hand on the cold cash drawer, some touchstone to keep me alive. No matter how I try, I cannot see the lure of tennis. If anything, I'm fascinated by the design of the red clay court. The illustration on the wall of a cross-section of the courts looks to me like a hunk of cake dusted with red sweetness, so I pull out a buck and slip it in the drawer. I breathe in realizing that all of the parts of the moment can't be caught and that before things are seen they are gone. Oh, and I'm now eating a candy bar. See I didn't even realize.

Over the everglades a sprawling nimbus rolls forth, yard by yard pummeling through the sky. The ground is so flat I can see it from here, an hour or two before it arrives. I know when it's here the world will flip dark, the wonderland creatures will crawl from the earth. They take on the rain like they drink with their skin: sandpaper scales, exoskeletons, slimy worm hides.

I whip a grain of sugar from the corner of my mouth and lick it down. The storm is here; la tempête commence. I'll be risking my life with every fence I lock while I close down the grounds of this tennis club. The lightning here cracks every ten seconds or so.