I'm trying the blog thing again.

But not here.

Here:
arandomscattering.wordpress.com

It's been a while. An old one and a new one...

This first one is an old poem. I wrote it a couple years ago (and it might be posted on here already). The second one is a response I wrote to that poem at the beginning of this summer. I had just moved into my new apartment and started to feel comfortable in myself and in my physical location for the first time in a long time (other than while in Italy).

A Cold Night

Smoke and pain twist
Toward the skylight (shut)—
Like the one in my room as a kid
When falling asleep I’d watch
The moon framed by astronaut walls—
And they fill the closed-in porch.

It’s freezing out with my
New coat, the freezing
Where you watch your

Breath (and pain twist
Toward the skylight [shut]—
Like the one in my room as a kid
When, falling asleep, I’d watch
The moon framed by astronaut walls—
And they fill the closed-in porch)

Dissipate into the vacuum
Of cold and marvel that
It’s not already ice.

But the pipe—a gift
From two halves that
Used to (maybe) not be
So halved; who can wrap a box
But keep separate houses—is warm
And something sweeter to taste.

Struck with the sharp finality
Of the interminable:
So smoke and pain
And breath and pain
And anything, and everything,
And pain.

A Warmer Night

Smoke drifts

up imprecise, dynamic

in the late spring t-shirt night,

and from the hammock hung

between two narrow trees I

watch it rise

through branches toward

the moon:

a glowing porcelain iris framed

by leafy cataracts—

the pipe gargles.

Slower.

Better to relight than to burn through.

But I love the way it moves

here

in our backyard [littere]decorated

with debris—a row boat capsized against

the fence, kept company by old

furniture for firewood and the train

clunkering through on the hour. I love

the way the

smoke

——————slips

on slight suggestions of the breeze

(impalpable); never knows the path

or destination, content to rise and the rest

will be a sweet surprise along the way.

I used to smoke in an old closed-

in porch, but the air was stale and stifling

to the curling plumes. They didn’t dance

like they do here.

Slower.

Savor it. Dissect.

I don’t know that I’ve ever really liked

the taste:

not so much a flavor as a gently caustic sting,

but there’s something there to love—a lost

memory, a new freedom—the power to control

time, to transcend nature: to take in a breath

of warmth in an intolerable winter; to track

it, magically visible through the spindly fingertips

of new trees as spring melts into summer.

Slower.

The wind knows where

it will blow

and the moon will never blink.

two more... tonight's been a writing-y kind of night

This Poem Has Metaphors.

So maybe I'm sharp,
but if only I were jagged...
Maybe I'm bright,
but just once
I'd like to burn your eyes...

to make
something
that not only is,
but
does.

No, I've spoon-fed
my lines with meaning
till they're puking up
melodrama,
green with wishing
it were not so green
with wanting, so very
mine.


Essentially, I get frustrated with how contrived my poetry feels sometimes.




Untitled

The crooked saw's
Worn-down teeth gleam,
Wet with blood
From its undead sapling feast.

The sun, perched impatiently
In early morning's seat,
Passes time by scorching dew
Like ants from every leaf.

The river bubbles slowly
Over stones, muttering somewhere
A cold hand creeps behind ancient
Man dozing in a chair.

Out with the old,
Out with the new,
In with whatever's left.
It's all entropy, right?

Yet somehow, I can't wait
For what comes next—
The young tree sputtering
Sugary green life on grateful bugs,

The sun attending the dew
In its heavenly home,
The old man feeling
Warmth of the Alone.



This one actually started out with just the image of the saw, and turned into something else entirely. I'm not sure how I feel about it, but until I decide I hate it, I'll keep it up.

I'm a bit apprehensive about posting this one, but that's kind of the point.

Object Impermanence

What is it?
What's the fear?
So worried
about scuffing the
whited sepulchre?

—a stroke of the brush
will clean that right up.
can't smell the piss
if it's covered in paint—

The censored sailor
still curses up a storm
under purgatorial bleeps
dead-set in slopping on
another coat, and I
mutter shit under my
breath when (I'm praying)
nobody can hear it.

—but what the world don't know won't hurt me,
and God's an infant lamenting
my new nothingness
as I leave the tomb.







If you want to take some more time to try and understand the poem on your own first, stop here.

This was a painful poem to write. I was struck today by how much fear I have of revealing more of myself than I am comfortable with in my writing. I am scared to death of showing what it is I really am sometimes. As a result, it doesn't even seem like me when it comes out. I think we keep an illusion very close to our hearts—that somehow, it's better not to be honest with yourself, with others, with God. I'm coming to the realization that I have often structured my personal life in a way that attempts to hide things—thoughts, feelings, actions—from many people, and from God. I have recently been trying to make a more concerted effort to counteract this tendency in my life, and it struck me that art is an area of life where honesty is not just valued, it is required. How can I assume that I could possibly create anything meaningful if I am afraid to articulate what it is I'm really trying to say because it's too self-disclosing, or because it involves language that I don't use on a regular basis? If this is what the truth of what I am trying to say hinges upon, how can I avoid it and stay honest in my writing?
Object permanence is the understanding that things exist whether you see them or not. Children below a very young age do not have the ability to understand this. They experience object impermanence. In attempting to hide things from God, or in believing that our actions matter more than our thoughts and our motivations, believing that these actions are the criteria on which we will be judged, we place God on the same level as these children who think an object that has been hidden from them no longer exists.

Pray for me, that I will become more open and honest with God and with people in all areas of my life.


note: If you think me a heathen now, please talk to me. I would love to have more than a one-sided conversation about this issue.

A Memory

When I was five, my family went on a trip across country. We camped out at a ton of places, one of which was on the Snake River in Wyoming. I have a vivid memory of standing on the edge of the water in front of our campsite and skipping stones with my brother, Nick, who is 7 years older than me, and my sister, Liz, who is 6 years older. I have been privileged and proud to watch my siblings grow up and make their choices as I make mine. This poem tries to use that memory to get at (among other things) how glad I am that no matter what paths our lives take, we are still family. Liz and Nick, this poem is ours. I love you both.


Snake River
(For Nick and Liz)

I can only assume that
Nick must have started it,
Then Liz, then me.

We stood at the edge
Of a swift and shallow stream,
Selecting stones judiciously

Then casting them out across
The water to count their steps
Before gravity took them under.

Each choice was irrevocable—
Once released, bound to fall below
The constant, rushing current

And join the droves of decisions
Already thrown by man or God,
Dissolving into the sand beneath our feet.

For all the fighting, the long ride bickering
About every nothing that masquerades
As anger and frustration,

We stood there on the bank
Of the Snake River, side by side by side,
And picked our destinies together.

swamped, drained, inspired.

I wish I had more time to write lately. Unfortunately, school has been quite demanding recently, and in the free time I do get, I can't really bring myself to open a notebook and think really hard for an hour. The most frustrating part about it all, though, is that I have so much I want to write about. There is so much ambition, I just don't know really how to harness it.
Recently, this is all I've been able to muster. The title changes pretty much every time I write it out.

To Move Mountains

I'd be content to see
a mustard seed turn over
in a gentle breeze.



—It's very short; very simple. I was talking to a friend about "faith-sized" requests in prayer. It's the idea that with whatever amount of faith we have at a given moment, there are things we can ask of God—things with tangible results (like "God please give me the opportunity to talk to this person before Friday")—that are proportionate to that amount of faith. If we pray and have complete faith in the fulfillment of those prayers, God will answer us in one way or another.
The gist of the poem, then, is that if with faith the size of a mustard seed we can make a mountain move into the sea, I must have a long way to go. At best, I might have enough faith to move the mustard seed. The mustard seed is not only a reference to the proportionate size difference from the mountain, but it is also the representation of faith. As such, the poem is also a prayer, that God could use what faith I do have in Him to begin to move and grow that seed, causing it to build upon itself. The mustard seed is a double metaphor, I suppose.

Ice

It's winter. There's a lot of it. Ever since I was a little kid, walking home from the bus stop, I've had this fascination with walking on ice—especially when it cracks underneath you. There's something so simple and childish about it. It reminds me of home. Lately I've been reconnecting with that feeling. I'm fixed on the concept of "home." It's a hard thing for me to wrap my mind around; I have this strong sense of it being a very real, tangible thing, however at the same time, it's almost impossible for me to really wrap my mind around it. As such, much of my poetry deals with "home," and with childhood and memories.
This is one of those, but it's also something more. It's the realization that home is still attainable in some form after childhood has passed.


Walking Home

I
As winter melts away,
Little ice ledges overhang
The borders of paved
Walks from Lewis
To the Hill.

I don’t know why—
The path is wide
(And for the most part,
Unoccupied)—
But I stay to the side

And let my sneaker drop
Naturally over the fragile
Glassy surface until all
My world—direction,
Thought, desire—

Is reduced to pure crunching,
The satisfying snap underfoot
That breathes in cracks, “it’s okay
For things to break.”

So like a fading dream
Upon awakening,
I chase it:
A truth,
Half-known
(If that)
Until somehow
In my mind
It’s found again
And I am home—
I know
And I am known.

II
We lived on Battis Road
And could declare “home”
Without a moment lost
To wistful thoughts.

Here, I used to cry
On the living room floor
Begging never to grow up,
Never work, bleed, or die.

Then, older, I would wander
The four house-lengths
Back from the bus,
Famished for excitement.

Drainage water formed a brook—
Frozen in the early months—
And here I first learned
Of that raw and simple catharsis.

So like a pioneer
(Of sorts, I imagined)
I braved it
Stomping,
Falling through,
Soaking wet;
Warmly cold
And alive,
Crackling
My way home—
Where I know
And I am known.

III
There’s comfort in the collapse
And order in the entropy;
A sound and a feeling that ring
In my bones like the dim voices
Of dear old friends.

It struck me like a falling sole
On my way to meet you up the Hill:
The destination binds it all,
It makes every crushed crystal
Sing one crisp but subtle song;

Whether small boy or grown man,
The melody remains.
Footsteps keep cadence
And the improvised adventure hums:

Vital and young
And heading home.
Heading home:
To know
And to be known.

IV
The destination binds it all
To one singular sensation.

And this is my terminus:
Where I find rest
And lay things out to dry,
Where comfort can be
Free to flourish,
Where at least
Something is sure
To be in order,
To feel planned,
To seem right;
This common end
Is my home:

There I know
And I am known.