Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting

Why are we continually at war with ourselves? Sometimes I feel as though truth really isn't elusive after all, it is I who am eluding it. Living is like holding a prisim in your hands, each new day catching a glimmer that was a little different than the last, a flush of yellow that was crimson, blue where it was white. Aristotle had a point, I suppose, in that something must last... Something has to be eternal or everything would fall apart at the seams.

Life is a comedy to those who think and a tragedy to those who feel.

I have loved God ever, I think, but I hate the catagorey that it puts me in. Believing in God feels a bit like believing in the Easter Bunny, it shuffles me in with door-to-door Bible salesmen and those annoying poets that keep rhyming "dove" with "heaven above" and "God's love". Yet God is so much more than this, I know, I know, I know. And I have loved him ever.

When I was younger I used to wield faith in Christ like a cudgel, triumphantly bashing and blasting my way through other people's crisis of faith and moments of doubt. I remember once I wrote to a friend that God is everywhere, even in between your fingers. I didn't know what I meant then, but I am thinking of it now.

In the next room there is a world famous flutist, warming up for a performance. It is a haunting, full sound that breathes colors and flavors and feelings. Most of the time, though, there is no music. What do we do then, I wonder? What do we do when there are things to be done and fatigue to deal with and love that's lost? When there isn't any music? On those "Monday Mornings"?
There is a lifetime, in that answer.

who are you,little i


Glitter is the panacea. It's the mall at Christmas time, but before thanksgiving, when the lights hang in smooth, ceiling bangles, and no one is hurried or rushed yet . . . Windows are frosted over in some lovely new gimmick and you haven't grown tired of ornaments.
Her name is Priyanka, and she grew up in India like I grew up in Africa, but she wears her home like a gorgeous sari draped beautifully, exotically, intangibly. We were shopping together, today. No one who is American can really pull off grace, I sometimes feel. She just narrowly escaped and is lovely and elegant and I love it and her. She is Hindu, and religion doesn't matter when I'm with her. It isn't that God doesn't matter, or spirituality, it's just that church service, hymns, and sacrament don't even exist. And I like it.

I wish I could sing, today. I wish I could make my voice spiral in that smooth, amber glaze that stills clock hands and passing strangers.

Life is too short not to travel, find jazz lounges, new friends, good poets. Life is too short to avoid puffed cheetos and scary movies. Life is to short not to sing in the shower and hold people without worrying about getting hurt.

And when I die I will still have the Maine sea breeze and the molten red thumbprint of sun on the back of my eyelids.

But I, being poor, have only my dreams

I wrote something beautiful, and it was somehow erased. So I will write whatever comes out.

I heard the most wonderful thing last night, settled in a couch, hands wrapped around steamed ceramic, listening to musicians pour their all and everything into jazz. A blind boy came at sat next to me, he touched my foot and laughed at me. His name was Dave, and he has perfect pitch . . . he listens to jazz because he knows it sounds right, but he cannot figure out mathematically why. And he will never know what it means that his eyes are a lovely mixture of blues and gold, and that his thumbs beat passionately on a dark green couch, inches away from me. And he will never know the gleam of a saxaphone in candlelight, but he will know jazz like I couldn't fathom.
What strength it must take, to be helpless.
I love the way a bass players fingers pluck and stroke, hammer and hold, pull and still--I love the nodding head of the pianist, lip bit, hands pulsing, pounding . . . the beat that breaks out of a drummers whole body, bending and folding ever so slightly, to the beat, the beat thebeat

I love that it doesn't make sense, but oh, it does . . . jazz doesn't resolve, it is crazy and lopsided, and lovely and full, somehow, piling up to pull and pluck and bang the heart strings like they were the cool bronze of a guitar.
Perhaps it is because we are the mishaped beauty of this place, that just doesn't make sense

Perhaps it is like love and faith and life, and jazz lets you believe in it all

Perhaps it is because I am more blind than I care to admit

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart)

I have 40 pages of papers to write but instead, I am here. Right now is the most happy I've been all day, and I can't help but think...perhaps this is what my life will be. I once heard a man say that the trick of the devil is not to make man do great evil, but rather to make him waste time... But this is not time wasted, you know? Any moment you are truly feeling, truly hurting or laughing or ANGRY you are alive. Cliche, I know, but all the great truths are.

We
is the infrequent beauty
kalidescope's crest
before beads shift
you will never have the same
us
and I miss
a thousand pictures
your hand there
fingers just so
Beautiful
Broken
Breadcrumb
(love)