“You know, I wouldn’t have stopped you if you tried.”

“I know.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because I knew you wouldn’t stop me.”

—

Suddenly, and at once, his face slackened.

“Am I supposed to feel something?”

“Not necessarily.”

“Well, that makes it pretty hard to be sure, doesn’t it?”

—

I got up to open a window, so I could breathe easier, feel lighter.

I immediately felt better.

I think it had more to do with the lifting than the air coming in.

—

I begged her to stay, but she wouldn’t listen. She refused to turn her head toward the motion of my hands.

—

“I mean, do you still believe.”

—

The glass slid across the bar, its momentum interrupted by his palm, the contents making waves.

It triggered a thought.

This should be a celebration.

—

We just kept driving, until we realized it was a cliche.

Then we parked, uncapped our tea, and tried to recall why we started, why we left, why we just kept driving.

—

She entered his last name, speaking without looking up.

“Just one?”

—

“I guess I just don’t really think about it much anymore.”

I wouldn’t stop you if you tried.

————————————————–
you thought it stood for wasted time

so you burned it down

for that tepid crime

despite it’s

sentimental brine

it could not contain

all the things you could never explain

so you doused all the beams and the land

with a poison that spreads in the wind

you could barely tied your own shoes

but you could climb to the top

to that old wooden room

and you’d stay

for days and days

if not for

dinner table breaks

lovers

they want to stay

til the house that they’ve built

don’t look the same

and they pick up

and head

for the door

in search of what

they think

they’ve ignored

it could not contain

all the things you could never explain

so you doused all the beams and the land

with a poison that spreads in the wind

no one would mistake your country eyes

for a fog that snakes through the pines

or a poison that spreads in the wind

I found myself on an odd route home from work yesterday, because I wanted to stop by a specific grocery store. At one point I was at a stop and noticed a small side street called Old Bent Tree. I then realized I was near an area of North Dallas called Bent Tree; an older but affluent community, country club and all.

I spent a lot of time as a kid riding around with my Grandma in that area. I didn’t know up from sideways when it came to driving directions, but without the tyranny of operating heavy machinery, I was free to observe and explore the world that passed us by. I recognized places and signs, even if I didn’t know how we got there or how we’d get back.

I remember seeing ‘Bent Tree’ on sub-division entrances, churches, businesses–it sticks. It evokes a clear visual. And one day I found it. The real one.

I was sitting in the back seat of my Grandma’s Ford Taurus, and I saw a tree that had splintered all the way into the trunk, causing nearly half of it to bend to the side.

“That’s the tree! That’s why it’s called Bent Tree!”

The tree was my Dead Sea Scrolls and Bent Tree my Qumran.

It was actually a bit scorched, probably a victim of a fairly recent lightning strike. But to me it had been like that since the beginning of time, and I was the first to observe it among the currently living. A grand excavation of generations past, and I didn’t even have to take off my seat belt.

Believing was easy and without question. Truth was clear. The world was everything just outside the back seat window.

Iced in all day so I wrote a song.

the windows rattle cause
the wind does carry on
circling the molecules
sticking to the catalogs

the color of our cheeks
changes with the beat
snow along the glass
measurements of heat

they will not charge you time
for the terms of strife
they will rattle on
it’s where you belong

sheets will soon give way
then what will they say
did we keep looking out
did we know our place

carry on
carry hot
we’re not long
we’re not lost

they will not charge us time
for the terms of strife
they will rattle on
it’s where we belong

it’s what we add to the black and white, a direction neither left or right, choosing neither blind or sight.

it’s the parenthesis that holds what we really mean–plainly, optional, neatly avoidable.

it’s the revision of the revisionist’s history, a pylon marking everything, then, now, eventually.

gray is a man born to a king
who knows there’s no rank between coal and his ring

gray is the silence that steers to right
that thing that was said between the sheets that night

it’s a handshake firm between
not friends
not enemies
not companies

people
hands
skin to skin
laughing mouths and shots of gin
bearing witness to what we’re in
she carries on without us then

by rank and file they walk the plank
of a ship that sailed long ago and sank
we raise our glasses and give thanks
cheers and clink and clink and clank

away
we stay
in the gray

I rarely keep up with the weather forecast. If I did, I would’ve known it was going to rain this morning. I might have mentally prepared for the way even trace amounts of precipitation bring out more trepidation and floundering in Dallas drivers than a 4-year-old on her first swim lesson.

Slow and steady kills the pace.

Then I notice one of those school spirit stickers on the rear windshield of a large pick-up truck, the sort with a clip-art image of a soccer ball atop a white-middle-class sounding name. His name was Kyle.

Was.

Separating it from the rest of those ubiquitous stickers were the words “In loving memory of” forming a curve above the ball, where the name of a school or a team might be.

1997-2007. It was a portable adhesive headstone.

Part of me felt a little disdain toward the parents. “I know he was your son, and that loss is unimaginable, but why do you have to wave a flag of sadness in my face and make me think about something so awful? I didn’t even know your kid.” went my imaginary one-sided conversation. Death has already been on the collective mind lately with the Arizona shootings–a 9-year-old among the victims–I already had a criminally short life in recent consciousness.

A moment later, traffic didn’t hurt so bad. I was thankful Kyle’s parents inadvertently shared with me that though their son didn’t live long, he loved soccer.

I guess life is like that sometimes.

Within hours of being at work I learn from a friend that a guy we knew in school died from a brain aneurysm less than two weeks ago.

That’s too much untimely death after barely a cup of coffee.

Sudden. Unexpected. Hideous. Unfair. But so is my being.

Over lunch I went to Nordstrom Rack to see if I could find some jeans. Justifiably, in my mind. It’s been something like a year since my last. Rack isn’t super close to my office, but just close enough to leave me with about 15-20 minutes of in-store time. Some might not even bother, but this time constraint is a boon to me.

I like new things and I don’t like to settle for less when spending money, but every passing minute spent in a retail outlet counts toward an exponential rate of personal self loathing. If I can’t find what I came for within 20 minutes, then it isn’t there.

It worked. I got a kick ass pair of jeans that actually fit, in a 20 minute time frame, and I felt good about it. Sometimes I feel like a woman for feeling good about finding a great pair of jeans, but, whatever, get up off my steez.

And this whole time I never thought about death. I thought about jeans.

I guess death is like that sometimes. A strange duplicity.

It’s the pinnacle of existential human nightmare, and yet the mind is still capable of putting it out entirely, and with things of drastically lower intrinsic value. At least momentarily.

But this doesn’t make me feel bad, and I don’t think it’s dishonorable. This function is as human as death itself. I think most of those who are no longer with us wouldn’t pray we’d be crippled by their absence. They’d probably hope we notice some things we took for granted, see life in a richer way, appreciate the trivial things. Especially the trivial things. They all matter because none of them do.

So whenever my time comes, I hope you miss me, and I hope it hurts a little because it means you loved me, but I’ll be damned if I keep you from feeling good about a new pair of jeans.

so I resigned myself to making a list to stay on point:

• Milk
• Shampoo

And then I couldn’t think of anything else.

But if I’m honest, I’ll probably still need that list.

My nearest grocery store is a Super Target which upgrades me to A.D.H.D. I could repeat those items over and over in my head, between my car and those automatic doors—like I’m cramming the last few minutes before an exam—but it’s useless. As soon as I cross the vinyl threshold it’ll all go dark, and I’ll find myself an hour and a half later wearing a plaid trapper hat and zebra print snuggie, pushing a basket full of clearance items representing 65% of all departments—shell-shock faced—wondering where it all went wrong.

rung out and folded
we fill our lives with a stark brand of cold and warm
press the will of men
will you then?

tamed by the noise
incensed by the silence
informed by the dormant heart that sets until you claim it

switch it on and blame it
for leading dim to dangerous
fluorescent and courageous

beauty won’t berate us
entertain trust
and then what?

religious
and then dust

I jotted this down while in Chicago, in a Field Notes memo book while sitting in a trendy coffee shop that serves their brew–not from some commercial machine monstrosity, but made to order by the cup–on a wooden tray with a mug and a decanter, while they played the Fleet Foxes entire Sun Giant record, because fuck other coffee shops.

Coming back to it now, I really like it, but I completely dismissed it initially as disingenuous scribbling because I wrote it in the context of the most painfully rote hipster/poet/artist stereotype I can imagine.

But then I do this every time I begin something creative. Even something as small and fleeting as this. I find some reason to discredit authenticity and value in my own work.

I’m too self conscious and I’m a people pleaser. A terrible combination. But now I write for a living. And now I realize that’s where my self criticism and evaluation belong, because I’m writing for them. But everything outside of that–it’s for me.

The more I let that sink into my marrow the more I’ve been enjoying re-kindling my affair with writing, and the more free I feel when I sit down with my guitar and a 4 track recorder.

Creating should be therapeutic, and at times astounding. So, here’s to less is this clever enough? or is this trying to be too clever? and more is this fun? Do I feel free?

Loving wandering around Chicago without any real plan or purpose, ducking into interesting places, choosing where to have lunch based more on proximity and provision of warm shelter than reputation (not being Popeye’s is also a qualifier), and trying not to look creepy while people-watching.

There’s so much sensation walking through a metropolitan city. Pretty girls and prettier women. A gays-be-damned street preacher amplified by a karaoke machine is scored by Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer on saxophone across the street. Plastic bucket percussionists, giant Christmas trees, fire trucks, sirens, the clack and rumble of the subway, Santa taking a smoke break …and that’s just one block.

I’m doing my best to blend in, shrouded under my Spiewak coat and Chrome bag, only momentarily exposing my suburban Texan by fumbling my train pass with an unpracticed hand more accustomed to turning a key in unshared space.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be creative, to create, and more specifically that balance between deliberate direction and organic, natural occurrence.

What I mean is, at least in my own experience, when I sit down to write something there is always this competition between the laborer that wants to push through even when motivation and inspiration start to dry up — because that’s good work ethic — and the playful, carefree side that wants the entire creative process to be a blissful, magical ride across a wave of marshmallow pillows in a land where Impedance is an old man who left town because the joy bubbles were ruining all his good leather shoes. (Paint that, Thomas Kinkade).

But often, that latter idealized lack of encumbrance produces something saccharine and belly ache inducing. No one likes belly aches. Unless, of course, you write an angst-ridden poem about your existential dilemma over whether your belly ache truly is, and is read by someone that totally gets you because they totally think the same way.

Pushing through creative hang-ups for the sake of completion usually, for me, causes a detachment from what is being created, and stops being an extension of myself. It’s usually not the sort of wrestling with conflict that brings about beauty and contrast. That’s not to discount creative block as a legitimate muse; the record that defined Radiohead’s career would have never been made if Thom Yorke hadn’t hit a wall. But, what I’m talking about is sacrificing quality and satisfaction for the sake of just being done, right now. But, to let procrastination and laziness win out defeats the whole creative purpose.

So we come back to that tautly pulled cord, intention on one end and fortuity on the other. I think most creative minds are happiest right in the middle. The reason being there’s a certain magic about sitting down to create something and having the unexpected come out. I’m easily bored and distracted, so if I’m not surprising myself, I’m not sticking around. But if it seems entirely random, it’s an insult to my conscious ego — It’s as if those two aspects of the brain are competing for credit.

I don’t think the resolution is some kind of intense psychotherapy, though. It’s just practice. About a year ago I started playing around with writing songs and it didn’t take long to realize an obvious, but common, misconception — that music, or any art, is completely inherent. You’re not just born with it. It takes practice. All of it. The narrative, the melody, the feel. When to be warm, when to be frigid. When to pause, when to be messy, when to not give a damn about convention and when to respect it. Everyone knows technical proficiency requires practice, but so do those parts that seem so inseparable from the soul.