The Highway

There's an accident on this highway every two miles. There's a mournful but light song playing on the radio and a matching smile on your face as we pass each one. The flames licking the sky and the frantic eyes searching the road give you a sick satisfaction. As if you're the one that caused them.

This is an everyday event as we head toward our not-so-final destination. The reflection in your glasses blocks out any understanding someone might reach. You shine back a cruel, malicious smirk carved into your mouth as you push your foot down on the gas pedal and switch lanes. I don't even try to look into your eyes anymore.

There's a disaster on every exit this time of year. you signal to the fast lane as if we were headed somewhere important and cut off the faster car behind us. The sun is blasting us with dying rays from behind the trees making a blurry sunset rainbow in the clouds. Your wheels hit the pavement with such speed the dashes become complete lines and I wonder if I'm just being overexposed.

With your hands locked onto the wheel, you murmur for me to turn up the music--it's your favorite song. I lean foward against the wind and bitterly turn the dial. I glare at you with your simple, free smile. I look at the cracks on the windows and remember the day you knocked them out because you were going to live in some desperately wonderful place. I wonder if you'll ever leave the state.


Originally performed for the slam on 3/10/11

Originally written on 7/10/05

The Sound. (Part 3)

I tripped over my own shoelace while I wondered what you were staring at. And it made me frustrated at the time that you didn't say anything, but only now do I realize you were trying to tell me with your eyes.

And talking without listening is a way to say you remember the past instead of hearing me now. Because losing that small anchor you had means that you cannot go back, even when you know the truth.
The places and people and things, all these proper nouns (now-ns) you hold in your heart, are long gone outside of you. Everything you have seen will live in you for as long as you have loved it and continue to do so. You cannot be lost from it. Not ever.

But it seems that no matter how far across the world I reach, you will keep looking at something else, at some other warning sign. And still, even in this isolation, I hope you feel all the warmth I have for you. I want you to do and get the best.

I hope, someday in a fairly distant future, I may be allowed to speak at your wake or throw dirt on your coffin. And then I will know how just peacefully you rest.

Originally performed on 1/27/11

Originally written on 3/29/09

The Size. (Part 2 of 3)

I run into this kind of problem all the time. I cannot sleep at night because I oversleep in the morning. Or perhaps vise versa.
The silence shared with one person is screaming about sadness while a loud concert with someone else is so peaceful.

It's just the little things you have to really watch for, all of them can speak in echos that count frequencies in the thousands and depths that no one has the strength to see. The way you can miss someone so new to your life or feel the way a memory plays out even when the sensation has passed.

These are just the small parts that speak so loudly. So when your eyes splinter your vision into a million sights and chairs become mountains, you'll learn to navigate your way to the shore and calm yourself before walking away again.

Originally performed on 1/27/11

Originally written on 3/29/09

The Shape. (Part 1 of 3)

There is something clear to me.
Part of it is that you haven't gotten it yet.
Another part is that I see that you're not ready to, but you want it.
I wonder if you have this clarity in a different way, though. Like seeing what you know I'm not ready to see.
It is a shame this misunderstanding is actually an inability to communicate something so subtle and so obvious.

When it comes to it, there are feelings and motions that I cannot begin to narrate so I make do with what I can. In the meantime, I hope that someone will pick up on the subtext of it all.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I want to know telepathy. I want to speak in measures and notes and heartstrings. I wish you could feel what I am feeling because I think it would mean so much more that way.

Originally performed on 1/27/11

Originally written on 3/29/09

Ghost in the Doorway

I had this dream where you were a large skeleton. You still had organs and a face, but I only saw your bones. Just like the world still had grass and trees but the only thing that mattered was the moon. Perhaps it was too dim to notice anything other than stark white or maybe that is all that needed to be paid attention to. It was more a matter of what was happening than any of these surface details.

You walked with me, like any skeleton would, and we didn't say a word for a very long time. Finally when words came, it was music and images. Light dancing across fields in places we had never been, wind traveling in trees we wanted to climb. I do not remember where we were, but that we weren't going anywhere special. What we would find did not surprise us, but reached into us and fed us life. I couldn't hear anything but your bleached thoughts and I don't remember how I looked. Perhaps I was just as naked as you were. I only know that when we touched it was like fire and when you held me there was nothing but the heat from the furnace inside your chest.

It will be a long winter if I don't see you again.


Originally performed 10/21/10
Originally written on 10/7/08

Still Life

An edit of this. Feedback is thoroughly encouraged. Criticism extremely welcome.

Eons have passed since we walked through that green maze to bronze fields.
Yet I have visited our park so many times in my thoughts,
with the heaviness of death hiding so close to my heart,
it would seem as though it was only yesterday since we were walking side by side.

With open eyes and bare feet,
the music of the air spilled into our ears
and we swayed like stalks of wheat.

Under the blue autumn sky,
I can still hear all of the words you ever spoke
echoing through the blades of grass.

We were not silent then;
we were not patient
and there was no need to be, either.
Our souls touched and grew inside one another.

I can only dig down so far
to find where there is a difference between us.
It would not matter if you lived in any other place,
if I could not see you with my eyes.
We were born to meet each other and live to learn.
(Perhaps if we had never met I may have died?
What about you?)

If my legs could carry me,
I would run.
If you could open your mouth,
you would conduct symphonies.

It was so simple for us.
We were creating worlds by discovering what already existed.
We were flourishing in the void.
We were making peace by not needing one another.

My only fears for you are that fear would get in the way of any life worth living.
That something could paralyze you beyond ever
understanding or experiencing the most necessary affairs.

Waves passed and oceans flew,
time churned and next thing I knew
you were walking away from me.

The crisp air hit my lungs and I decided this wouldn't be when I chased after anyone.
I was tired of walking so far North
that I forgot where the beach lay.
When I was at your place
I never knew which way was home.
I got so comfortable in your bed
I began to dislike my own skin.

Four years ago I might not have known any better,
but four years from now I might say the same thing.

I take a deep breath and plunge in.

---maybe I'll find you after all.

Cage

Once the opportunity strikes, you don't want to ask the important questions because you want to hold off on the answer.
That isn't about fear, it's about excitement. And hope.

The Nomad puts on her moccasins and opens the tent door to the rising sun.

A lot of things have strange connotations that lead us to make very strange assumptions. In this society words like, "calm" and "gentle" read as "slow" and "meek". Some people don't fill out stereotypes. Some things are not as bad as they seem.

She steps past the threshold of her makeshift home and stands tall. Today she will journey far and not know what she will see.

There are things we can expect. We know that the Moon will run a cycle in twenty eight days and that it takes nine months for a baby to develop in the womb. We know that it takes nine months for a child to complete a school year and that it takes four years to complete a Bachelor's Degree. I wonder if we've always been so sure.

The morning is kind and the Nomad smiles into the face of the world. The sights that she has seen before do not compare to a present moment nor does the future. She is here and now.

As soon as you are aware of a role that you play, you ruin it. Especially the ones that make you the hero.

The Nomad has met many people. Many that have joined her in travels, others that have been hospitable. All have taught her something and all have learned something in return. She holds the words of Warriors in her chest and stories of Hunters in her eyes. She has learned strength from them. She keeps the hearts of Poets on her tongue and the sights of Lovers in her skin. She cannot turn away from others so easily but cares not to master such arts. Her job is not to become them, but to absorb them.

The phrase that I want to use in this sentence is "The problem is" but it can't be pointed out so blatantly. It's more of a subtle redundancy, the kind that everyone is so wildly aware of that they've forgotten how to define it.
The word "the".
The elephant isn't being ignored, it's that everyone's already adapted to the awkwardness of it. They want to pay attention to just about anything else.

Many have asked her where she was going. In most cases she'll reply with an elaborate lie that comes so very close to the truth in the end. After all, a destination is just a way of steering your course-- why not decide to head in that direction? In some cases, however, she'll be a bit more honest, which is definitely a lie--and she'll say she has no idea. After hearing both, a simple person would decide that she is not only lost but a liar. The Nomad would concur and go further to say that she may just be a contradiction. But she has somewhere to go.

The Hawaiian language has a series of complex sounds but is only written with twelve letters.

Perhaps definitions are simply how well you can subtly define the completely elusive.


Originally written on 8/11/08