dansolomon

i remember decatur street in august-
it was hot, then,
and dry-
we walked along through the quarter and into the marigny-

i remember rainfall in june
down on banks street-
it feels almost flippant to mention it now,
but the rain came down hard that day
and well into the night,
and we had nowhere to be
and too much to do
and our shoes got soaked,
right up until it was time
to get in the van
and drive away-

i remember decatur at night-
humid, dripping
with sweat-
walking the narrows
with an eye out for those
who make decatur their home-
the drunks staggering-
decatur judged them harshly
while we walked and smiled
(like we knew better)
just passing through town-
decatur just laughed-
the joke on us,
we were there too-
we were there-

where are the hustlers?
the ones i remember with hungry eyes,
looking for unfamiliar faces
and the outline of a fat wallet-
where are the hustlers today?
on buses, helicopters, trains-
on their way to texas?
wandering flooded streets,
floating trash cans full of bread?
preying on tourists-
praying on stars-
no more easy marks
between the bars-
where are the hustlers?

no shoes need shining tonight-
not a brass band distraction-
and where'd you get those shoes?
where'd you get those shoes?
man,
you can have them-
at least they're dry.

donate to the red cross.

house a refugee.

[faded]
August 2002, Austin TX. The apartment is huge, we're trying to decide where to put things. We haven't got any furniture but we sit on the still-packed boxes, arranged to resemble couches and chairs. We have a television and watch movies and we haven't got any furniture but there's a giant poster of Bob Dylan on the wall, playing a bass guitar. I make spaghetti almost every night, and eventually we get furniture at Goodwill for a hundred and fifty dollars. Jim and Carl get the biggest room and Fernie takes the smallest, mine in the middle. I put my bed in the corner.

My first job is at the University Co-op, where they sell books to students at the University of Texas. I last a day and a half, quitting when I can't find parking. Three months later my car dies and I learn to ride the bus. I'll walk to and from the bus stop every day for almost a year, half a mile each way, and I won't start driving again for another two years.

October 2002. I date a few girls but no one seriously. I hit it off well with one but it's wrong for a number of reasons, never goes beyond the first week and like everything it hits hard when it ends but I don't even feel it a week later. I spend half an hour staring at the phone, waiting to call another girl. I lose my place in a sentence talking to another one when I see the way her eyes look through me, eyes like fire.

December 2004. I see the girl with eyes like fire and there's nothing left, if it was ever there, and we pretend not to recognize each other even as we sit at the same table. I'll never speak to her again, never speak to any of them, not regret it.

[avalanche]
September 2004, San Francisco CA. I spend several nights in City Lights, sitting in a wooden chair in the basement. Years ago this would have been an obligation, a fulfillment of a role I simultaneously loathed and reveled in, knowing that both reveling in and loathing the role is yet another action that one must take to fulfill the stereotype. all writers playing at homeless spend their lost hours in city lights, especially in the basement, whenever they are stuck in san francisco. At this point the stereotype holds little appeal because I've realized I'm not all that good at it, not good at women or drinking, that I don't value money enough to enjoy even poverty as a badge of honor. there will always be someone better at playing the role, I tell myself long before that September and that basement, and those who spend so much time fulfilling their role have less time for writing.

I spend my nights in City Lights reading books about Muhammed Ali. In a few months I've have read a dozen books about him, all in the hope of understanding the courage it took to say to a world full of expectations the words, i know where i'm going and i know the truth and i don't have to be what you want me to be. i'm free to be what i want. I'll quit when I realize that the courage comes in the blink of an eye, that it's not something one premeditates. Words like those have been spoken for centuries, and the courage was to say them at a time when the world would have been his if he had only played along. When he said i ain't got no quarrel with no viet cong it wasn't a statement on the futility of war but the words of a man who was scared at the thought of having his life interrupted, and I'll quit reading about him when I understand that this makes it more courageous, not less.

But that September I'll keep reading in that basement, and if anyone looks over at me and judges me for playing a role of my own, I'll never even know it, and there'll come a point some time later when I'll understand that it's almost the same as it not happening at all.

[austin is hot but i like where i'm living]
August 2003, Austin TX. Friends help me load my things into a rented truck and drive it two and a half miles uptown. My rent nearly doubles in a new apartment, my first to myself, a tiny studio with wood floors and room enough for my things and a space to write. I'll move out of the apartment in a year, subletting it to the sister of the same friend who helped me load my things while I see San Francisco and the rest of America for a few months. A year and a half earlier I had paid a hundred and fifty dollars in rent to live in a townhouse in San Antonio. I'll consider these changes like money is something I value in my poorest moments, consider them easily worth it in better times, throughout the course of the next year and a half. A year and a half later I'll move out again, giving the apartment over to that same girl for good. these are all just places, I know when I move in and I'll know when I move out, and there is nothing out there but more places. That August I know that the apartment that I do not share with anyone, that the apartment that I left behind two and a half miles south, these spaces we try to make ours, that they're only valuable because we need spaces and that they're all meant to be temporary. That an apartment is no more home than a chair in the basement of an old bookstore in San Francisco.

July 2005. Austin and I are finished and I say my goodbyes one night at a party that all of my friends have come to. everyone i know in the world is here, I think, knowing it's not true but believing it anyway because there are so many people there. Places are not significant of themselves, just a set of weather conditions and some natural resources that I rarely know how to use to my advantage. I contradict the thought from two years earlier that places are meant to be temporary- I realize that the only true significance of a place is the people with whom you share it, and despite having planned to leave for nine months, this party is the first time it hurts to realize that the place and the people are being left behind.

[summer's kiss is over, baby]
August 2005, Chicago IL. The nights get cool here, even in August. The days are hot, hot like Texas, but the nights are amazing. Places are just weather and people. The people here are good. The i has become a we and we make them dinner. I walk around again, the car remains parked a few blocks away, ignored.The girl I spend my time with doesn't keep me lying awake waiting to make a phone call, and I have realized that such things are not symptoms of love. Hot dogs are good here, the kind you can't get in Texas. There are trains here. Trains make so much sense. I understand these things, places and trains and that different kind of courage and how all of the things you think are significant aren't, not really, not in the end. Beginnings and endings, tracks running out.

I want beginnings, and those don't come without endings. A year ago I recognized an ending and worried that I wouldn't have the courage to take it, too content to keep going along the same track, sacrificing the potential of a new beginning for the comfort that comes with not having to deal with an ending.

The beginning starts now. All that has to happen to find one is an ending.

[almost]
Months turn to weeks and weeks to days- we leave for Chicago on Monday morning. The issue of the austin chronicle that came out yesterday is the last one I'll read as a resident. Half the stuff it lists, I won't be here for. It's a little strange to think about.

But who needs to think about it? Tonight's the going-away party. Brilliant idea, that. I've never had one before- never been anywhere that people'd much care if I were there or not, leastways not enough for a party. But this- get all the people you're going to mis and put them all in the same place, say goodbye at once. So strange to be leaving a place I'm going to miss.

And there's never any time these days, never any time at all. All I want is to see people one more time before leaving. I never use the Internet anymore, way too much to do to take an hour or two to go to a coffee shop and wireless my way through a day. Packing and preparing- Kat remembered today that we have to turn the electricity and gas on at our apartment in Chicago or we wouldn't have done it till we got up there, flipped a switch, and been met with confusion and disappointment. Getting it together- I don't remember ever being so busy.

[and it's gone daddy gone]
So tonight is the party, and I'm okay with the fact that the Spent Shells aren't playing. It's not time for it. People have been asking me to do a set tonight at the party and what the hell? Maybe I will. My last scheduled show was at the Hideout on Monday, the first venue I found and liked in Austin, and it felt good. The first time I had fun on stage in months, actually, and I'm sure it showed. Maybe I'll do one tonight, and maybe I won't. It won't matter much either way.

On Sunday we rent the truck, somehow keeping from U-Haul the fact that I haven't got a driver's license, and loading the damn thing up. Anyone who wants to come and help us put our things in the truck will be rewarded handsomely, and we will couch the whole thing in terms of having one more chance to see each other before leaving- terribly clever.

But mostly right now I'm just trying to hit all the bases, including here, and say goodbye to everything, including this. The next entry in this journal will be the last entry in this journal.

[forgotten]
I am not the Jesus of PPD. Oh, no. I am the lost ghost boy, doomed to wander the halls for all eternity, wailing and waiting to be found. paaaaaaay meeeeee, I cry to deaf ears- paaaaaaaay meeeeee.... But no- I remain unheard and forgotten.

It sure feels like it, anyway. This is the third of three weekend jaunts into the esteemed halls of PPD Research, the phase one overnight pharmaceutical reserach clinic I check myself into in exchange for the promise of free, easy, big-sum money. I take HIV drugs. They are boring. The promised compensation is the reason any of us are here-

And that promise done got broke. The coordinator of our study quit halfway through the damn thing, leaving the checks unrequested, unsent, and leaving us unpaid. We were promised eight hundred dollars by Wednesday; it is Friday now and we are told we will not see that check for another week and a half. oh, don't worry- it will be here, they promise, and I'm sure eventually it will, though such promises sound more hollowed out the more often they're made.When I tell people I am owe money to who I am not planning to pay, I push them off with promises of future money coming soon, very soon, do not worry. I'm sure the check will come in that week and a half, but few things make you feel more like a whore than offering your body for the promise of cash and finding out that the cash ain't forthcoming. My last week in Austin and I am completely broke. Motherfuckers gonna get their legs broke.

[white trash party]
Because I am poor and desperate even by the standards of people who sell their bodies for money, I was the only person to inquire where our checks were, why they hadn't arrived when promised, and when they might be claimed. Therefore I was the one who broke the news to my fellow labrats.

I may have been the brokest motherfucker in the room, but I'm hardly the only one who was counting on the money being there when it was supposed to. Suddenly I find myself leading a band of frustrated, betrayed labrats, all demanding the very incentive that incited them to do this ridiculous thing to themselves. we should organize a protest, Juan suggests. yes, Armando agrees, we show up for our procedures and appointments on time- they owe us the same. I agree. We have decided to confront the assistant coordinator, a pleasant young woman who has recently been promoted, and seek a recourse for her predecessor's mistakes. Whether or not such a thing is coming is one of the great mysteries of labrat life.

[gone]
The Internet broke at our apartment a few weeks ago. The neighbor whose wireless signal I was bootlegging moved out. I miss it less than I thought. I miss reading the news, keeping up with my friends- how we all document our lives in public- watching the daily show- but I don't miss the compulsive f5 of the email inbox and wasting time because it's easy. I'll have it again when I move, and see if I find a better balance.

And how about that move? Eleven days now, and the next three of them are to be spent in PPD. I always think in epic terms, like every event of my life is a track off of led zeppelin iv, and so of course everything that happens, I consider whether or not it's happening for the last time. At least for a while. It may be a year or more, longer, before Marc and I sit down for dinner again, before I have chips and queso with Ani- thought of in those terms, it's never enough.

[in other news]
Packing and calling companies that rent moving vans, signing papers and contracts and making plans and boring legal procedures that cost too much, pills and blood, the mundanities of day-to-day life when you're rushing to get everything done. Why worry about it? It's boring. More fun- poetry, watching your friends play music, being outside when the rain is light enough to not interfere, just to cool off a Texas summer. We document our lives in public, but the things that matter to me are all personal.

[nineteen]
Nineteen days left. Not much time at all; I've spent nineteen days without leaving my apartment during particularly strange times, I know people who've spent nineteen days staggering drunk, eating only scrambled eggs and listening to songs for swingin' lovers by Frank Sinatra. If one were to attempt to watch an episode of buffy the vampire slayer every day for nineteen days, by the time the big climax rolled around he would three episodes to watch in his new digs.

This is not a fate I share. I have seen them all already. I feel no shame for this. What the hell? Why dwell on how little time is left? It's a non-stop party around these parts.

[bring your boogie shoes]
Item one of the non-stop party includes having poplife rejected by another agent. I am not bitter over this, oh no, but I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't frustrated. This particular agent seemed a good fit for the work, and I was excited at the opportunity to work with him based on statements he made about the way he operates-- that, if he chose not to represent your work, he would offer detailed criticism of said work.

In the case of poplife, he offered none, explaining that i have a great imagination and he loves the premise and i'm a good writer and the dialogue is fine and the characters are well-crafted and the plot is well-conceived. Which is a delightful thing to hear, it's true, but less delightful when accompanied by i'm going to have to pass. And he makes a good point, that any representative of my work would have to be very passionate about it, and if that's not him then it's silly to want more, so it really just brings me to my real concern.

Is any literary agent going to be able to relate to a book with a twenty-five year old protagonist? The book has done well as it is, as a free download under a Creative Commons license, it's been read more times than I ever anticipated and the response has been strong, so I don't doubt the merit of the work. Just whether or not the people who are able to bring it into print are going to feel the same connection to the characters that the thousand or so people who've read it online have. Maybe I should rewrite it so that Elliott is an up-and-coming literary agent.

'oh, you represent groundbreaking commercial fiction?' she cooed into his ear. 'i find that irresistibly sexy. take me now, you mighty literary agent god! bend me over the oak desk that you purchased from the fitzgerald estate and cram me full of your artistic-vision-seeing seed!'

I'd be rich, right?

And I know all of this is just pathological spin control; I'm not that out of touch. There's a reason I'm taking shots at the guy who, after all, was kind enough to read my book, to praise it when he could have left all such comments out, to explain in a fair manner why he personally was not the best person for my present needs. There's a reason I was careful to mention all of said praise, as well as the numbers it's done as a download and how great the response has been. Rejections dent the ego, and I'm trying to shore mine up. The next step is mentioning the rejections my literary heroes received, how long it took them for their first novels to achieve publication (the rum diary took forty years to see publication, and Thompson did all right in the meantime), and posting pictures of mine maginificent penis so all can gaze upon its wonder in silent awe and admiration. You know how these things go.

In the meantime, I'm back at the beginning here, albeit with a shorter list of prospects. I've still got a book, and I still like it; this latest experience had me re-reading it and I'm proud of the work. There are other projects to keep me occupied while I wait for someone to take an interest.

But, oh, it is frustrating.

[there ain't no stoppin' this train]
The second party activity is packing. Not exciting, I know, but what can you do? Those books need to be transported somehow, and boxes seems the traditional way to go.

The books are mostly Kat's, not mine. Of the eleven boxes so far packed, maybe three of them are books I own, the other eight are hers. What happens when two former used bookstore employees cohabitate.

But what I really want to do is say goodbye, but in that nice way. That way that says we will do the things we've always done, just more deliberately. we will eat chips and queso and sit together in movie theaters and listen to bands play and sit at tables on patios and sing songs and recite poems still. we will just do them now instead of always thinking of tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. Nineteen days left, and this is how I want to spend them. And I don't care much about the book or the boxes or much else, so long as this is how we all say goodbye.

[rivers]
Seven years ago I came to Texas. My parents had moved here when I was seventeen and I had nowhere else to be when I finished high school so this seemed as good a place as any to go.

I liked the myth of the place, and the way it was shaped. It was meant to be a shorter experiment; a place to find some answers for a little while, to figure out who I was and where I wanted to go when I really got started. Seven years now and I've never lived anywhere in this place that wasn't on a river. I thought I might end up living in Washington or Kentucky for a while, ages ago, and now I have a tattoo on my arm of the Alamo and no one understands it and I never explain it to them and I'm not going to try now. I have my own reasons and I have my own reasons for having stayed, my own reasons for leaving.

I started keeping a journal those seven years ago and all of it is on the Internet, from then to now, archived here like you can contain the experiences of your growth into something resembling adulthood in lines and curves. I leave Texas in a little over three weeks and I'm leaving all of this with it. I have my own reasons.

[the colorado]
Two years ago I lived in Austin and my favorite record was blackberry belle by the Twilight Singers.

Everything I love is about the search for truth. I'm into posturing and talking trash and it ain't braggin' if it's true and but only because I've been shown that such bravado can lead to a larger truth than overwhelming sincerity. Even if the truth only appears in the space that such bravado creates.

Two years ago I sat at a desk in a small apartment I lived in by myself, the only time in my life I lived alone, and listened to that record all night, every night, for months. And I wrote all the damn time. I've learned since then that creativity ebbs and flows, and sometimes when I'm in a more reflective state of mind I can even remember that when it's ebbing and I'm convinced that I'll never write again. Words are easy to find, easy to believe in.

I'm not a musician and any inspiration I felt to paint left me before I crossed my first river; my search for truth is a search through words. I love abstraction but it's not a language I speak. I try to believe that these shapes that are recognized as language are just another form of abstraction. I'll never know. It's not a question I get to answer.

[the san antonio]
Four years ago I lived in San Antonio and my favorite record was grace by Jeff Buckley. I don't listen to that record anymore, but that should speak more about its continued power than a lack thereof.

Seven years ago I wrote of a different record, listening to it every few months can send me back there and i like that. if i listened to it too much here then it would belong to right now, and i don’t like ‘right now’ very much. The reason I don't listen to grace is the opposite of the reason I didn't listen to that record seven years ago.

Two hours ago I was at a diner where they were playing grace. I tried not to listen. It's not that I was afraid that I would be taken back to the place I was four years ago. It's not that I worried it would make me feel something. I was worried that it wouldn't.

Seven years ago I started keeping a journal and putting it on the Internet. It was just a page of text that I kept on a free service that I updated with everything I had written once a month.

Four years ago I put it on a different service, more public, based on community, and I was so desperate and lonely and starving for attention that I decided that my life would be okay, finally, if I could just let people know these things that were in my head. To prove that I wasn't alone, or just to prove that even if no one else ever felt the way I did, it didn't mean that I was an alien. I listened to Jeff Buckley all the time and I called the journal mysterywhteboy, a misspelling of the title of a live album that came out a couple years after he drowned in the Wolf River.

I had my own theories on his death, like anyone who ever found truth in the expression of another person who died mysteriously does. suicide or tragic accident? it must have been a suicide, if only subconsciously... you can hear it. he says 'i feel them drown my name' in a song. he knew how he would die. It made sense and it seemed important once.

I don't have a theory now. I've learned in the past four years how irrelevant the question is. I don't listen to that record now because there's no point.

[the rio grande]
Five years ago I lived in McAllen, Texas and my favorite record was the marshall mathers lp by Eminem.

I have been so angry in my life, you would not believe it. You would not believe how angry a boy who had nothing much to be angry about could be. How infuriating these things that we control can be until we realize the fact that we control them. How powerless a person can feel watching that control as it grows more and more distant and everything that should be an opportunity feels like a trap.

Have you ever felt that pull to do something more than the things you have built your life around, known that it can not be that hard to do them, known that the stories and the songs and the legends are full of people who have done them and survived, thrived, lived and loved and had grand, glorious adventures, felt the need to do these things, and understood fundamentally that the power to do them was really and truly in your hands, and also known somehow that you could not be the one to do them?

Have you ever known that it must be other people, because such things require something that you don't have? And it may just be courage, but you can pretend that it's money instead and feel better about yourself. You can pretend that the thing that ties you to these limits that keep you from feeling like you are in control is a job and not fear. You can pretend, but you will know, somehow, and that is where the anger comes from. It's not merely being angry with yourself. It's being angry about the fact that whether or not it's your own fault or not isn't the point, because it's not something you're capable of changing.

Three years ago I changed.

[the colorado]
Three years ago I had just moved to Austin and my favorite record was bringing it all back home by Bob Dylan even though everyone assumed it was the beginning stages of the polyphonic spree by the Polyphonic Spree.

The secret to changing isn't in realizing that you hold the key, or that you're unhappy, or that you know what you want. The secret to changing is realizing that you will die and no one will do anything to make your life matter at all. It's not realizing that the power was in you all along, it's realizing that the power isn't in anyone else. The difference between the two is the difference between an open space and a window. Only one of them means anything in a practical sense.

I thrive on change, live for it. I have been so many more people in the three years since I started listening to that Bob Dylan record than I was in all the years prior. I didn't even resemble myself before Texas; ask anyone who knew me before those seven years and three rivers and see what they say about the person I was then as compared to now. I don't much resemble the boy who went down to the Rio Grande now, but any form I took before then is completely unrecognizable.

Six years ago I started to become something I respected, and that process of starting was misleading. I had not yet realized that no one else would finish it. The me that I was six years ago wasn't much different than the me that listened to Jeff Buckley and thought in vague ways about the fact that I would die and it probably wouldn't even happen in a river, not much different than the me that listened to that Bob Dylan record the first time but a million miles from the one who got sick of it and switched to blackberry belle.

[the rio grande]
Six years ago I had settled into McAllen and my favorite record was terror twilight by Pavement.

The process of becoming is exciting and glorious. It is so strange to think about all of it because at the time I thought I knew who I was. That certainty has come and gone in the past six years, but I find it interesting that I am more certain now, despite all of the changing I have done, despite the rate of acceleration, than I was for the first four years after Texas. Less than half of it has happened since crossing the Colorado. I'm leaving the river for good in such a short time. It would be dishonest to not let it change me, to not offer myself to it and see where it takes me.

[the colorado]
One year ago my favorite record was the black album by Jay-Z.

I think it is important to know how to make an exit. In three weeks I'll live by a lake and the rivers will freeze in the winter. Texas rivers never freeze, even when it snows.

One year ago it snowed in Texas and I thought it was significant. It was silly; there are places where that happens more often than not during those months. I'll soon live in one of them, spend the next winter there. I'll wish I was in Texas again that winter and I wouldn't be surprised if I even stop by for a while, if only just to keep warm, but that's never been the point. I've exhausted rivers, and in three weeks I'll be done with them except to visit. I've exhausted this journal, too, and in three weeks I'll be done with it except as a museum.

If I do start looking at rivers again, it'll be upstream.

[bear]
Reached the halfway point in the screenplay today. Twenty-one pages in two days. It's coming easy now, and the second half of it is mostly just letting all the things that were set up in the first half run their course. It'd be real nice to have a first draft done before I check back into PPD a week from today.

The script's basically a variation on a theme that Warren Ellis calls fight comics-- everything in the script is either a big fight, or exposition setting the picture up for the big fight, explaining motives for the fight, developing the characters who are going to do the fighting. It's not that it's dumb, it's just that it doesn't pause for the quiet moments. The quiet moments are there for the sake of pacing, and to build momentum. This is probably the most rhythmic project I've done outside of poetry; it moves deliberately and maintains a consistency that I'm usually not all that interested in. It's fun writing, and the first draft should be a decent building block for a good screenplay.

[hop to it, sucka]
Kat's been in PPD for the past week. It's strange having that apartment to myself. I miss her, but what the hell? Of course I miss her. I spent the first couple days wasting time, got back to work seriously yesterday. It's funny how you start to anchor yourself around people, lose your center when they're gone. She was in Dallas the week before; aside from the day I got out of PPD we haven't been able to spend any time together in almost two weeks. But I got some of that center back, and she's out for a few days tomorrow. Rhythm.

I'm giving myself tomorrow off, not going to worry about getting much done. I've got more to do tonight anyway. My head's a little scattered. Typing for eight hours a day can do that to you, and there's still bears out there to fight. I'll deal with the rest later.

"found"

I. (a letter to marc)

i have found the hope
that i have been looking for-
it was hidden,
tucked inside a part of me
i had once assumed must be a place of weakness
simply because it was soft-

i have found the hope
that we have talked about-
found it in the places our conversations rarely go-
found alone the point of our talks-
found the reason that
we sat down to dinner
once a month
convinced that if the key to the world we wanted could be found
it would be found by the two of us-
(how could it not?
we both affect too much humility to say so
but finding solutions to problems
is a skill on which we pride ourselves)

i found my path
parallel to your own-
and likely discovered by the same means-
in quiet honesty
on nights when i was not alone-
and i have come to the realization
that the hope we have sought
was packaged with that same honesty
and that it had to be found by each of us
independently
and brought back
to be realized, shared,
and spread like a virus-

i have found the hope
that we have been looking for-
the better world that we have spoken of
all these years-
it is built around honesty
that is inspired by love

II.
there are words that only come forth
when summoned by a hunger that could knock down walls-

there are truths revealed
only through sunrises
witnessed to signify the end
of another night
on which sleep wouldn't come-
fevered hallucinations and echoes of madness
that take one just close enough to the edge
that the revelations can be brought back
to those who haven't yet witnessed them-

i've known hunger, yeah-
and my bed has known its share of restless nights-
i've used them to cultivate my own madness
and done my best
to seek the truth found within-

i've known hunger
and these are not hands
that have never lifted
what did not belong to me-

i've known sleepless nights
and found sunrises not so beautiful
when seen too many mornings
from the wrong side-

i've known madness, yeah-
the kind that can convince you
that moving your hands over a piece
of metal and plastic
in order to evoke lines and curves
onto a page or a screen
will somehow cause them to manifest
into representations
of actual thoughts and feelings-

i've known madness-
been persuaded by it to cut off
the means of feeding anything
other than the neurosis itself-

i've known madness
and believed that the act
of calling forth
the components of a word
was called s-p-e-l-l-i-n-g
for a reason-
i've believed that the feelings represented
by those lines and curves
summoned by the cast spell
were guideposts-
that navigated properly
they could lead one to the truth-

i am still mad-
i still believe this to be true-

III. (a letter to tony)
we reached escape velocity
as if by accident
and found the paths we each maintained
orbited different bodies-

it is important that you know that mine has not slowed its acceleration-
that it was a choice-

and you are my brother-
(i say this now in plain words-
without affectation or metaphor
so it can be understood simply
without the misinterpretation that plagues
people who attempt to say too much in pretty words-
you are my brother-)

it is important that you know this now-
it is important that you know
that i am no longer interested
in hiding my secrets
behind a persona that never had you fooled-
it is important that you know
that i considered carefully the words
that you spoke that day in portland-

it is important that you tell people
when they've helped you shape yourself
into something that more closely resembles
the form you've desired to take-
it is important to leave notes on the cars of strangers
when the actions they have taken as a normal part
of the course of their lives
have led us to new ideas-
it is important to write our secrets in balloons
and send them across the river-
and if such honesty is of value with strangers
its worth must be greater
when shared with friends

IV.
i spent seven years
dragging myself across texas-
i was born at eighteen
and measured my lifetime in rivers-
from the rio grande to the san antonio-
stopping at the colorado
and finding a home there,
satisfied for a time,
never venturing a stop much past it-

i was born at eighteen,
poured myself into a mold in the shape of me-
the next year the mold was cast
and the following i was fired-
a halfway point was next
and i marked the occasion
with a mid-life crisis-

i am twenty-five years old tonight
and the parts of myself that i celebrated
have been hammered to the forefront-
the remains scattered,
drifting upstream in those rivers i've chosen to leave behind-

i am twenty-five years old tonight
and i am not mad
at anyone

i have forgiven my former lovers-
accepted blame where due
and moved beyond pettiness-
content to leave them in texas
and texas to them-

i am twenty-five years old tonight
and i no longer seek to escape from memories
by fleeing the places
those memories were built-
america is no longer just a convenient place to hide-
(and it is possible to run out of america-
i know-
i have been there)

i do not seek to escape-
i do not seek to paint with words what i found while hiding-
i am no longer interested in so many shades of grey-

and if i'm running-
if i'm running-
i'm only doing it
because it's faster
than walking-

V. (a letter to katherine)
i have no words for you
but there is a lifetime to find them-

i practiced magic to create new words-
(they call the process spelling)
and arranged them according to ancient rules
to unlock their full power-
a grammar grimoire
speaking of holy sorcery-

i use these words now
to tell truths
i've never before spoken-

i use these words now
to celebrate hope
i've never before felt-

i use these words now
to declare love
i've never before defined-

i offer to you everything that i am-
this honesty my only possession-
and i accept that which you have offered in return-

and if all of these words
are just a means to keep a record
of the time we beat the devil-
if all that i am
is to be given
to create something new-
there is no one to whom
i would rather give it-

i have felt a new responsibility
since the night i kissed you on that hill-
(the second one)
to never be less
than the man i was
on that day-

i have felt a new responsibility
to honor honesty above pride-
to let life write the words
and never the opposite-
i have discovered that the love i sought
is nurtured by the honesty
i too often hid behind bravado-

i have found the hope
that i have been looking for-
i use my words now
to share it