that is the burden (inspired by eliot, yeats, superman, the green lantern, markus zusak, dustin, john k sampson, and the doctor)

i am the one who stumbled
i am the one who called out the warning
it was my voice rising
on the mad wind that rushed past
and threw you into the crater

i am the heron and the frog
i am between the impulse and the action
between the stimulus and the emotion
i am nero and his fiddle
i am the firstborn child

i am the withering jew
hidden away in a basement
walking on tightropes
i am the one who kills the king
in every dream i have

i am the sweet silver bells
i am the oldest song
i am the fear and the joy
i am the center and the centrifuge
the savior and the damned

i am the last one
i am the judgment
i am the weight and the glory
and when my home burned
in the fires of pompeii

i was left
standing on a hillside
watching everything i know
buried
under mountains of ash

this is my giving it goes out to everyone

i am thankful for
plaid
reasons
sweet things
softness
cats
pianos
songwriters
thorns
virtue.

and also
(this might sound a bit strange,)
fevers
circles under eyes
cemeteries
opening wounds
night driving
being alone.

but i promise i am most thankful for
you.

cast off

i've been thinking about it for a long time.
i was always too afraid before
(and everyone,
no one believed i could)
well i'll show them.

i'll do it. i'll take the plunge.
i'll make that leap,
and soar, with the sun on my back
and the wind rushing past me.
i'll show them

that nothing's impossible.
i was a timid kid with glasses
that are too big and shirts that
don't fit but now i will be known.
i will mean something.

i can feel the bravery
swelling up in my chest.
i'm smiling big now.
i'm doing it. i'm doing it
and no one can stop me. so i leap.

above me
the golden gate bridge recedes
into the sky.

ode to my favorite techie (the somewhat less sucky version)

you know, we're not so different, you and i,
you with your friend, and me back here with mine,
though in your eyes, i see a cloudless sky,
and in your eyebrows, that metallic shine;

but i see, too, the smile you throw at him,
the kind of smile that makes him lean on you;
you look as happy as you've ever been,
but i can see that this is nothing new —

that you two are the greatest kind of friends,
the kind who love to keep each other safe,
who've been together back since god knows when
and always know exactly what to say;

i turn and lean my head on my friend's back.
i hope that someday, we can be like that.

no power (awe struck)

you, crying girl,
with fragile wrists and eyes turned the color of roses,

folded to the table,
crooked like a tree in winter,

you work so hard
and look so proud and burn so bright

and you've withstood blizzards and hurricanes,
not bending and not breaking,

but when the earthquake comes
it rips up your roots and leaves you strewn and gasping.

always reminded that you must grow up.
always afraid of the fall — the taller you get

how the safety of the earth
keeps getting further and further away.

dear blake,

a cabin in the mountains,
way up, further north,
far beyond all the phone lines
and the passing cars amongst the pines;

the snow falls like summer,
the one you saw last fall,
disillusioned with the world
and all those jaw-breaker girls;

your guilt-ridden crows'-feet
betray your cigarette smile,
and you're beautiful and sad,
but you're all that i have,

and i'm not even sure i have that much,
so listen close or you'll miss it:
i know that you will overcome someday.
you call in sick but you won't stay that way.

haste the day

night, thick as canvas,
cold as an absolute —
it will never abandon you to
wild lightning and burning bushes,

it will rid these flares, each an SOS,
from the invisible tree-branch webs
that creep, spindle-like, over windows,
and its breath will cover everything
like the deepest and blackest of fogs;

and you, shivering dreamer,
will feel it weighing down on your chest;
and when you open your mouth,
it will rush in like water,
taking with it a thousand ghosts,
each one ten times more ancient than the last.

i am bone-deep exhausted (i will leave this somewhere far from home)

i remembered. your words are like
a crash cart — they jolt my tired heart back into
motion barely sufficient to keep me running;

i always wonder why i go to bed so late,
but i can never find an answer to
this comprehensive exhaustion;

and i feel bad, when i hear you sing songs about me, allegedly,
because that exhaustion draws me
straight home (my magnetic north)

and i just end up telling someone else
that i have to leave, and in my desperation
i forget about your songs

and all i remember is night driving,
an ocean of music and two yellow lines
for miles and miles and miles
and miles
and miles

i didn't take it

all i see these days is whitewashed walls
dirty sheets and bottles on the floor

i'm falling apart from the inside out
you can see the chasms all over my face

my friend sleeps in the room next to me
we talk but he never seems to notice my slow dying

my words are muffled and i can't move
but he laughs and laughs and laughs

sometimes i have to turn on the tv
just to drown him out before he leaves

someone else has a room in the attic
i don't know him so well

the things he says
they hurt me

make me reach for those bottles on the floor
because that's the only way

when my words are so muffled that
even i can't hear them

when i'm paralyzed with the weight
and the effort of movement

then i stop caring and
i can finally sleep

there are pills on the ground
are they mine

they must be
no one else lives here

no prior knowledge

(the assignment was to write a poem about a painting. i picked this one by manolo millares. it's not strictly a painting; he stuck torn burlap to it and did some other stuff. it's titled "sarcophagus of philip II".)

you liked the way
that white chalk outline looked
the day you died
(smiled and pointed) so
they put one around
your coffin

you would shiver
every morning underneath
your flannel quilt
(young boy's toes curled up) so
they put a quilt around
your coffin

but things were angry, you see,
and that chalk line (it was smeared)
(i hope you won't mind)
and they ripped away your quilt
slashed it to tatters wrapped around
your coffin

and things were violent, you see,
so their knives (big and black)
(they threw them in with you)
and they chewed up their tobacco
spit it (thin and black) all over
your coffin

in your afterlife you are
a martyr so i will give
your coffin

a new name
and it will be fit for a king
(a boy king)

dear philip,
lying in your ugly,
battered,
filthy
defiled

sarcophagus

ode to my favorite techie

you know, we're not so different, you and i,
you with your friend, and me back here with mine;
and maybe if i wasn't quite so shy
(if i would find some strength and grow a spine)

i'd tap you on the shoulder and say, "hey,
i come here pretty often and i've seen
you sitting right here every single day
and watching all these awesome shows for free —"

and then i'd swallow down my stupid fears,
"so do you need some help with sound and lights?"
but you would probably look at me weird —
i need to know if it would be all right;

so if i meet you one day and i say,
"i like your style," would that be okay?

set it ablaze

"YOU ARE THE GASOLINE I AM THE FIRE
BELIEVE ME, I'M NOT GONNA SAVE YOU
YOU'LL FOREVER BE BURNED ALIVE"

oh yeah? oh yeah?
that's what they want?
i can give it to them
ripping it
from my throat handing it
throwing it
ramming it down their chests
i can feel it echoing off the in
sides of my legs i feel it i
SCREAM SCREAM SCREAM SCREAM SCREAM
it goes on and ON and
ON AND ON AND ON AND ON AND ON

oh did i break my
light box look at those shards the
shattered glass, throw that at
them too ram that down
their throats
they like that, you know that
violence, i can see them slam
dancing the circle pit, god i miss the circle pit,
i want to be down there lashing out i want
SLAM SLAM SLAM SLAM SLAM
i want to punch their f
lights out send them home happy

give me that mic oh give it to me
oh give it to me now oh
GIVE IT GIVE IT GIVE IT GIVE IT GIVE IT
let me wrap it around my throat yeah
let me i will choke my words i will
CHOKE CHOKE CHOKE CHOKE CHOKE
they will stutter out ripping like
i sound like a rabid in the background
the break beats the
BREAK BREAK BREAK BREAK BREAK
they are breaking it
they are TEARING IT ALL DOWN

i can see them back there banging
their heads i can see them they want
they want me so bad they want me to
giants in the ocean
yeah, let's give them that those guitars
down down up down those chords
those chords i can feel them echoing
off the soles of my feet they shake me they
bring me to my
knees i
FALL FALL FALL FALL FALL
and those words
come ripping
out of my throat

don't even tell me
don't tell me this is it
this isn't it

this

is

everything

strike

(the assignment was to write a poem about your observations of a stranger, and to use a different poetic voice than the one you normally use. so i rhymed. ew.)

there is an old woman sitting on a chair,
inconspicuously in the way,
sitting very quietly there;

it is plain she does not want to stay
in the way her mouth wrestles with her frown;
i can see her patience beginning to fray;

i look up, so she looks down,
and asks me if she is in the way;
i turn my eyes back toward the ground

because i can see her patience beginning to fray
and i do not know what i should say
to this old woman who is in the way.

overfuckingworked

tomorrow
if you see my eyes sunken
into the back of my head
or scratched out with a pencil
into two bleeding x's

know that i did not sleep
and i wish angels lived with me
but they are much too smart
they would be disgusted
by the wreck who opened the door for them

broken english

(the assignment was to write a poem about a parent.)

once there was a little girl who climbed
the mango tree in her backyard
(she was only five years old;
her sister was eleven)

but then the winds changed,
a promise of freedom with
a risk much too high to accept,
and she was rushed off

further south
(she was thousands of miles away when
she heard about mr. oswald's terrible feat)
and she moved around,

way up north, south again, then north once more
to pursue what she loved —
the way things looked
the beautiful way things could look

and she learned to speak in yet another language
and to draw designs that would make people smile
and she went to the big city to be an american
and she worked at a corporation, where she met this man

i don't know where she started believing in god
or in andy warhol or ralph nader
or in the clash or the ramones
or in health food and her children

but when i hear her speak on the phone,
bits of english dotted along the stream of french,
then i think, what if
i had been cuban like her
after all?

for some reason

you, young virtuoso,
here you are, far from home,
attracted by a simple promise;

you smile as if you don't know how
and speak as if you're used to singing,
but your face is only kindness.

a coat that's too dark for your features
and a scarf that's too light for your coat
and i just want to keep you singing;

so i secure your name in my memory
(stephen w terribile)
and i'll put it down in writing.

nerves and muscle (anthony)

(the assignment was to write a poem including the line, "there are days we live as if death were nowhere in the background".)

no one likes us much,
this group of kids,
young, ostracized,
and what are we supposed to do with that?

if no one else will
then we will
carry each other on our backs.

eventually you stop
trying to make people look at you,
but once you start looking at yourself,
you find all the bad things everyone else has put there;
we all have those things cluttered up
inside us,
constricting our breath
giving us heart attacks
(not our bodies — the other half)

and it hurts to feel that way

so we do our utmost
to stop feeling

there are days we live
as if death were nowhere in the background,
yet furtively,
ashamedly,
we glance over our shoulders
to affirm his quiet breathing
before we open the car doors,

and we drive,
when our speed is ninety and
the visibility is zero,
and we're pushing so hard
as if striving to take flight,

and even when it landed us in the hospital,
we never told each other,
"i peeked"

riding on the metro (sonnet IV)

i haven't smiled this much since god knows when.

oh dearest, how i love to see you break.

i want to snap your fingers one by one 

and swoon at every anguished cry you make.

i almost feel sorry for your veins.

they're turning into dust before your eyes.

oh, if i could, i'd force-feed you your pain,

but oh, how sweetly i'd kiss you goodbye.

you've gone through every single drug you own.

since august, all you think about is death.

but august was a full three months ago.

i've waited long enough for your last breath.

i've hidden all the answers that you seek.

now your forever's only one more week.

seb (image + imagination)

you saw the best minds of your generation
destroyed by madness, starving, hysterical,
and bearing witness to such a tragedy
has traced dark, demure circles around your eyes

you look down and pretend
that those circles are supposed to be there

i hope that one day your ring finger
lives up to its name
and you find someone to give all your words to
who has in his heart the same sunset that colors your hair

but if that never happens, i want to take your hand
cover up your ring finger and give you all of my hope

maybe someday you'll stand on the edge of a cliff
and the wind will howl around you,
blow the dark circles away from your eyes and
let there be light

and you will look out over the ocean
and all of your guilt will be washed away

it's over.

new dawn, new day,
everything like that;
but i like the crowds,
jumping up and down,
and even though
we've ten weeks to go,
there is a light at the end of this tunnel.

and i guess he was right:
yes we could.

today is november 4th

"There has never been a better time to be artistically angry and full of love, if one can walk that uneasy line"

-blake schwarzenbach

i like that quote.

cross your fingers and hope.

song of myself II (the infinitely suckier sequel)

(the assignment was to write a 4-stanza poem describing yourself.
what the hell.
i tried to keep this one light on the teenage angst.)

someday i would like to save a life.
i would like to stitch up a wound,
take a bullet,
grab someone's hand on the golden gate bridge,
write something meaningful —
if it's not too much to ask.
my role is boy 1.
he's always smiling.
forgive me if i drop character every now and then.

i am a child of punk rock.
i want to be there,
sweaty bodies, all my friends, pressing in —
punched in the jaw by rosy-cheeked housewives,
kicked in the gut by brand-new shopping malls,
we are all so eager to carry each other on our backs.
one by one we take the mic and say,
"this is what i believe."
this is what i believe:

i believe that people are good.
i believe that music saves lives.
i believe in questioning authority,
universal healthcare,
giant particle accelerators,
and young adult fiction.
but most importantly:
i believe.
it's just that sometimes
i meet someone who doesn't believe in me.

at times like this
(this evening, the role of the victim will be played by riley richards)
i go home and watch pinocchio.
pinocchio is my favorite movie because
the ending always makes me feel a little better about my chances.
(do you think it's strange:
last year i wrote a song of myself,
but now i have nothing to say.)