A dull ache where once was longing

A dull ache where once was longing:

Preaching sermons to brick wall moss
somewhere far from anything
I ever held sacred

Life condensed to a dull ache,
sloughing off parts
until all that’s left is ill-defined, ignorable

A lifetime of anxious moments
compounded into that instant
when I knew she was gone

The totality of alone
in every empty action and memory
where she used to exist

The sharp stab of yet another empty Spring
yet again sprinting towards complete entropy

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Spring

Here’s a small bit of writing from “the void sutras” about how spring kills the lonely.

Spring albums:
In the spring I feel a compulsion to listen to a certain record I found years before. I can’t recall when it was bonded to the season. But now, the smell of new growth and the fading cold brings it back.
The walks grow longer, the overhanging branches more lush. The songs in concert with girls in sundresses smiling in city parks. That is the soundtrack to the thickening air, the speeding bikes and the burgeoning of new life, new pairings in the new daylight.
And so it is the soundtrack of being alone. There was once a girl, who loved me in a small apartment, drunk on wine and the promise of a new season. We laid together on fresh sheets and listened to the sounds of the highway. We once broke bread, and smiled from the depth of our chests. The radiant glowing sun of new lovers. And we laid there listening to music tangled in the sheets of fading winter. She exists still, somewhere in the land of girls-long-gone, happy in our moment. She is in that record, that memory of spring, the awakenings therein.
It was that album playing when I drove away from her, heartsick and again alone. Her hair and smile now belonging to that place of joyous hearts and perfect memory. It was that album which coaxed me from highways to back roads, from streetlights to headlamps lighting the trees, tear-stained and streaking.
So, it is spring, and that music reminds me of places left behind. So it is spring and I stand my lonely vigil, blessed to have not forgotten the lessons of winter.

the void sutras on Amazon

 

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Saturday Blues

Saturday Blues:

Saturdays are the worst, especially after nothing doing Friday nights. It sits there like bad road. It sits there with all possibilities open, but none seem interesting. It sits there with tabula rasa head and lazy, hungover fingers. No one to call, no place worth walking to; Saturday and perpetually alone.

I smiled at the smell of stale beer this morning, walking to get coffee, the promise of something familiar. The quick check girl never remembers me. I remember her tattoo during the rain-soaked walk back to the anonymity of home. Saturdays are the worst, and another hour passes with nothing to speak of: no new words, no new relaxation. A
simple anxiety that all there is left are the moments till casual conversations at bars, subtle flirtations over coffee and the five days of faking it in between.

 

From: the void sutras

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Periphery Sample

I’ve decided to offer up the first act-ish of Periphery for free. If you like what you’re reading please check out Periphery on Amazon(Paperback and digital), YouHeartBooks(digital), or Smashwords(digital).

Spread the word. Look for dinosaurs. Enjoy.

Please right-click save-as:

periphery-cover
Periphery.pdf

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Offerings

Offerings:

We wrote those words on slivers of silver, leaving them as offering to the rain.

Watching stacks of ourselves dispersed by magnetic storms which leave no trace,
no hint of ash.

We wrote those words with the patience of saints, in scribe-like care,
and due attention paid to the void.

Waiting at a distance for the ionized smell of rain, which will grant us leave
to walk from that place
into the permanence of unknowing.

*This poem appears in “the void sutras” available on Amazon.com or eBook from smashwords.com

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Pranayama

The false smoke of her breath in winter
was sole proof that we were alive,

that the world still held some sense of empathy its cold dead grip.

Watching the lighthouse rhythm of her breath on the frozen air
as footfalls in the snow marked time in our shared staccato pace

movement was the only guard against that growing entropy.

The staggered pulse of her breath in spring
slipped between angry phrases,
leaving no imprint,

as her figure diminished into the gathering dark.

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The Suicide Chronicles

I’ve started work on a series of non-fiction pieces on depression, extremely tentatively called “The Suicide Chronicles.” Eventually they will be collated into a book of advice/anecdotes for people like myself who tend to not connect with anecdotes or advice. So, yeah… I guess I’m going to post one every now and again. Here’s the first one I have somewhat finished…. readable, at least… I think.

Your complete lack of understanding just made me feel worse.
            Or: No, ‘fucking someone’ won’t make me feel better

I get this often. They  will say things like “just pick up some nameless girl at a bar and fuck her. You get off, and you never need to see her again.” This is the moment where I feel the most alien, the most hopeless. I don’t think that way. I don’t want to think that way. It makes me even lonelier to know that these are the thoughts of the few people that are close to me. It’s gross and makes me think that those male stereotypes are right, and that’s what I’m doing wrong. I doubt myself in the most fundamental way.

     If that level of debased action is what wins over the fairer sex, then isn’t it proper, correct, to “fuck bitches” and spray semen on every wall I encounter? Is it not my Dharma to forget names and give fake numbers? Am I displeasing the unifying force behind the universe by continuing respect based asceticism?

     I guess I am.

     You’re right.

     Fat girls do need love too. I forgot that we only judge people on looks. I let slip from my memory that genital fusion is the highest, most purified, form of love. Well, now that I have that all straightened out I’ll “pick up some fatty” and “savage her” thereby curing me of all melancholia in one fell ejaculate. Or, I’ll hate myself so much for what I’ve done. I’ll gnaw and thrash against my soft-will  in the weeks and years to follow. I’ll keep thinking that my treatment of woman is proof that we are simply apes, soulless automaton orgasming through history. Frankly, there’s no point in continuing to live if that’s the case. I mean that for myself, and myself only. Atheist deserve love too, you know?

     If we are just upright apes and death is simply a cold finality, then I’d rather not play. If the cessation of brain function signals the end of our individual uniqueness, then no thanks.  If everything we are is wiped from the universe, joining the uncounted billions of others who are forever gone, with no hope of reprise…. No, I don’t think I can do that. I don’t think I can live in that kind of clockwork universe where the whims of the hormonal system dictate the motions of history. I’d rather carry on with a vague sort of hope for something better than orgasming into availability until the empty void of forever swallows us whole.

     It’s this line of thinking which makes me feel even more alone and alien when a well meaning friend gives me terrible advice. It’s the fact that I jump concepts from casual sex to an uncaring and cold universe is why I dread your party invitations. In the end we’re both right, I’d wager. But you don’t see me telling you to learn to meditate in perfect, quiet, celibacy, do you? So shut up about your random orgasms and hope for satiety, and I’ll keep quiet about my growing monasticism in a cold basement with little hope for salvation.

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Yet another letter to the her that never existed

Yet another letter to the her that never existed:

It’s New Years Eve,
and I have no idea where you are.

There are faint firework sounds echoing down the alleyway
where we first kissed in a cinematic rain.

So many memories in a whiff of invented perfume
that’s still holding tightly to my pillow.

That old sinking feeling is beginning again
as I pace from the bedroom to the couch.

The apartment is empty, quiet
save for the light tapping of computer keys,
and the gentle whirring of the space heater I got
to keep you from getting too cold,
when I was the one who wasn’t here.

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Old poem

I mentioned the other day on Twitter that I recalled a really old poem where I wished I was fatter. A million years later I reread it with the eyes of an overweight man and wished I could slap my old self in his stupid slim face. The poem in question:

Delta Waves

 

I wish I were fatter,

then I’d have an excuse.

 

Leaning back in the mirror

she made me pull down the front of my pants

 

to expose a small bit of pubic hair

like models in adverts for jeans or anorexia.

 

Small yellowing packets

chemical reaction creased.

 

I’m hot tired.

Do you know what that is?

 

Almost drowsy, but almost awake—

that post awakening, in-your-room-for-too-long feeling?

 

Where you need either a cup of coffee or

a glass of sherry, no ice.

 

Old, Younger, Alexx, you sir are a boob of the highest caliber. Also, I wouldn’t have used “bit” in the 3rd stanza. Well, I mean, “I” wouldn’t… but you, meaning old “I” did. This is like Back to the Future.

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The Quick

Of the things that slaughter me

without cause

walking alone on frozen grass cuts deepest-

A frost-trodden path

and my fading breath

as sole testament

of any transit.

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