Someone is Waiting

I'm personally dissatisfied with myself and my output for a period of time more extensive than I can recall experiencing previously. In light of this, Jeff Mangum:

Someone is waiting to swallow all the halos out of you
As your face blows through my windows
Sending pieces flying all around my room

And I love you and I want to
Shoot all the super heroes from your skies

What Do You Hear Now, Walt Whitman? (20)

20

The deep blue night sky overtakes me and wraps me,
consumes me completely.
Inward I fall towards the blackness -
aroused, alone, and unaccounted for.
Here I am vacant,
here I am real.
I taste life tingling on my tongue
and I smell it and breathe it in.
I let the emptiness that is reality console me -
it seeps beneath my skin and dances through me.
Dangling from my fingertips,
life drips down and soars above and around,
flaring and blazing, all consuming -
lighting the blank canvas sky and illuminating the sore, sad existence that surrounds.
I see in color for the first time,
experiencing every taste and scent all at once,
everything coming over me and drowning me.
I am everything and nothing and all in between.

The starry sky shines down on me,
I lay asleep facing the heavens, my own blank page.

What Do You Hear Now, Walt Whitman? (19)

19

I stare at the sky, lonely and I wonder
is that really starlight or just the heavens crashing down.

Istare at the great fires and waves, the tumbling terror of the trembling twilight
thrusting and thrashing and ravaging and calling the world to sleep.
If our time is now we ought to embrace it and let the world cave in.
I smile as the clouds devour themselves and the fields flare ablaze.
I reach for the splattered colors and reshape the heavens.
I reach for soul and stir it about.
I grab hold of the ground and pray for save travel.
I let go and escape in a breeze through the waves of the sky.

The destruction flows through me and moves me;
it keeps me afloat as I dance through the ages.
I watch the world collapse and stumble time and time again -
every mistake like a vision across my eyes.
A tunnel surrounds me -
a sharp, endless tunnel of visions and prophesies -
tales of past and present and the ages upon ages.
It all blends together and recycles and becomes one.
It surrounds me and enthralls me,
bringing my inners to life and stealing my soul.
It laughs and whispers softly the words of ages.
It crashes in a beautiful nightmare of flames raging like all wars at once.

It ignites my heart and prepares me for the end of existence.
I combust and evaporate.
Everything is calm.
Everything is repeating.
My eyes blink and I know the world is safer now adazed than ever before.
It is our endless floating that makes us real and relentless.
It is our constant confusion that keeps us still.
It is the end of the days and new beginning.
It is only safe when the light dies down.

I hear myself call in the distance.
I feel it breathe and barrage under my skin.
The heavens smile and release.
The worst is over.
The days and the nights flare into one with one final gleam of life,
but come crashing back into the daze that is and ever will be.

We are life and we are still.
I open my eyes and I see.

What Do You Hear Now, Walt Whitman? (18)

18

I’m getting tired of restless nights.
the moon hangs low and sighs with me.
I spit chaos towards the stars;
chaos secretes from every opening on my lowly body,
this jumbled mess of life seeping from my tiniest pores.
I dig a hole and smile for hours -
closer to hell and safer from life,
safer in this tiny crevice,
this chamber somehow less a prison than the world free around me.
It's dim, but it's free -
free, the darkness surrounding and swallowing me -
less alive the only way to truly live.

And this place caves in -
this stale blue four bedroom, thee bath monstrosity on the hill -
the walls tremble in the chill before crashing down -
and for a moment its completely silent -
if for a moment I could freeze and just sit there in perfect, pure silence;
the sound of destruction waiting to happen,
the desperate sound of the vacant, cool air just before the world falls apart.

It's chilling, it's brilliant, this silent shriek,
it burrows through my heart and devours me;
I squirm a little bit before accepting the oncoming destruction
like watching an oncoming car just before crashes into you.

The same silence spins through the air just after it all comes down -
it's brilliant.

What Do You Hear Now, Walt Whitman? (17)

17

Suddenly I want to be back in California.
I want to be drunk and write poetry for hours
before passing out on the couch to infomercials.

I watch the pacific fly by my eyes
like I’m driving to work in Santa Monica again;
not staring bleakly at a white ceiling
surrounded by white walls
in some empty white apartment
that seems more random as the hours pass.

Cutting ties to reality,
I try not to let the weather affect my choice in clothing
but my nails dig deeper into my leg
and my tongue has been bit raw.
The alarm clock screeches for hours
before my neighbors finally start beating on the wall
I never really understood talk shows,
but they're on and I don't feel like moving.
I always thought Jesus had bigger plans for me.
The television screen squeaks and hisses
and vaguely blurs into the wall
until even the ocean fizzes and slurs around me.

I empty myself on my bed,
lay there waiting for time to resist its pattern
and to be eaten by the sheets,
falling always and erased from even my mother's memory.

Suddenly California doesn't seem so far anymore.
I walk for hours
but everything is flat and pale,
water is dense but my world is square.
I miss your lifestyle,
fainting in and out across the screen
as my white walls flicker and shimmer
and the ocean's bulb runs dry to passing hours.

I’m following someone I do not know.
She never looks me straight in the eyes,
but she always seems to call me and beg.
Her hair is on fire
and her eyes are empty
like a faint memory of me laying on a bed,
wasted and wrecked and ravaged
like the coastline I once drove regularly.
I follow her intently but our eyes never seem to meet.
Our secret so deep that even I am unaware,
our passion so intense and grotesque
that her smile drools an evil yearning.
Her face cries and I can't seem to fight my interest.
She starts running and I fall behind,
she finds real life and she grabs its hand and squeals.
She laughs
and all I feel is the sudden punch to the stomach that it’s all over.

California melts on the porch.
Fireflies don't even exist in my mind,
the moon dries up and welts
while the bed evaporates
and I find myself lying alone on the floor
amongst puddles and stains,
all torn and tears.
Kids stand in line because its time to go to confession again.

What Do You Hear Now, Walt Whitman? (16)

16

And the fire burns,
the steering wheel turns and the brisk air churns,
watch dance about,
the demons dangle through trip top trepidations
and I squeal all the while.
Never near finagling and fondling
young girls unbutton and reboot,
temptation is a personal computer -
shelling and reshelling,
darker and faster, darker and wavering,
relinquish - the night air begs.

I burrow my way through the burning wreck
of books, anthologies, and queer volumes,
volumes scoffing and snaring,
mocking and undressing through the brilliant shrill of flames,
flaring and wavering, dancing tamelessly across the skyline.
I swim curiously,
agape and ancient, fire never gives up,
fire never fails to amaze and bewilder;
even the blazing towers of words on paper -
this thing we call literature with our noses touching the sky -
just like a small candle this blazing tower of books burns at the soul -
nothing quite as astonishing,
nothing quite as brilliant,
nothing quite as bright and vacant,
nothing quite as thrilling,
nothing quite comparable -
nothing, nothing fills my soul
and my empty body falters and falls -
and I lay barren and overwrought,
lay ablaze amongst books towering overhead,
books laying, stacked quaintly and neatly,
stacked perfectly for the blaze that overtakes and enchants the soul of every watcher.
Every watcher - brave and weary and wrong -
every watcher unsure,
every watcher alone,
every watcher one more body to count as the population dwindles back to zero.

We hold hands and rejoice in emptiness,
we leak, but we hang on -
hang on, somehow gently resisting Mother Earth's cruel spin.

What Do You Hear Now, Walt Whitman? (15)

15

That was never me,
see those kids stumbling around Hollywood streets,
aimless and aroused, stimulated by all the lights,
all the madness, all the openness, all the first nights of freedom;
that was never me.

But I was always there,
quaking and clamoring,
awkward, awake, aware of everything,
my life was pages turning on my bedroom ceiling.

So I was there, I've stumbled with the best of them,
I've seen the nights and quenched the moments,
been there and bellowed and rehearsed.
The moments weren't mine,
but the fervor of the nights always came back to me,
the scared straight, the sensation,
the teal sky above the yellow lights, all shimmering,
all rotating and blending,
the world all alive and blinking;
all from the safety of soft sheets and my blank bedroom ceiling.

That was never me,
but I was always there.
And so I am.

What Do You Hear Now, Walt Whitman? (14)

14

The lake shimmers and tangles.
I walk every night by couples on the rocks covered in blankets
and the sweat of young lust masking the cold, Midwest winter air.
I stop and watch.
The couple to my left doesn't notice. Or simply ignores me.
In fact I think she rather enjoys it.
Maybe she's thinking of me.
Maybe their connection is nothing
and they feel as empty I do
or as empty as I always did
lying on the bed outstretched and alone and cold and dirty and empty,
so empty, so broken and soiled.
I laid in the same bed for years
in the same sweat of the young lust exploring itself
on the rocks by the lake on the cold, Midwest winter night.

But are we really all the same?
We're all really empty and broken,
tattered and spent, swollen and bleak empty skyline,
unhesitant like the horizon forever
but never as beautiful as the same,
when tangled and coiled together in some blanket,
some hive of lust, burrowed in each others embrace;
The sun rises and smiles at our reprise, our release, our empty, awkward embrace;
The day breaks like we do as we fall into each others longing arms.

I hear someone picking up the pieces the next day,
not even looking at the indent in the bed beneath the tangled sheets,
not crying or really caring, but cleaning the house because it distracts,
it detaches the memory and pushes it back,
pushes it further inside and cries like younger children.
We all know the feeling! We all fall down!

What Do You Hear Now, Walt Whitman? (13)

13

That's golden, that digging feeling in your chest,
that whirling and painful grinding of teeth.
The snow falls and you wait patiently, constantly checking your watch,
consistently inconsistent in your pacing, back and forth and back,
deliberately undeliberate in your pacing, forth and back and forth.
Anxiously frowning, the only sting worse than the bite of the frost on your lips.

Her cab never comes. You wait for a few more hours before sighing and giving up,
only to sit looking out the window all night.

That's right; somehow it's colder indoors,
somehow the chill is always worse and the empty fire place frowns,
it hasn't been used for years, it aches like you do,
it cries the sweet memory of Christmases long past,
the glistening orange, the golden heat, the desperately comforting warmth.
It screeches happiness and comfort, it bellows and worries,
it comforts you in its shared sadness. It's empty and alone.

The fake Christmas tree in the corner hangs its head and tries to die,
if only to join in the collective mourning.

What Do You Hear Now, Walt Whitman? (12)

12

Feel the breeze take over like submerging into water,
let the darkness drown the avenue and shadows usurp each oncoming corner,
everyone is suspicious and everyone is discreet.

Feel the cool, feel the winter, feel your tender toes,
tumble your way to the sidewalk,
the rain drops are tender, but the path is fleeting,
the sidewalk is turning and twisting, vision is deceiving,
shivering through every narrow corner,
slipping down the street.

The streetlights portray puppets,
pulling the night sky and pouting in the gutter.

It's devastating to devour, it's disastrous and disheartening,
it's creeping through the desert, it's falling and flailing in the gutter.

Tremble, tremble, traverse the landscape of the darkness,
the empty street, the long walk home; stumbling.
Hear the empty, dull air; let it consume you.
Forget the fervor and flame, forget everything,
forget the darkness and close your eyes,
forget the failure of the night and the day before,
forget the future,
forget the dark stumbling road that lies ahead,
forget the friends who got you here,
forget the feeling of your bed and your home,
forget what lies ahead,
close your eyes and ramble home, ramble wherever the road leads,
wreck and ravage the couch as it hugs you,
reach out for someone and find only a pillow,
fall, fall into some dazed, distant sleep unlike any tumble you've ever known.

What Do You Hear Now, Walt Whitman? (11)

11

And summer smiles fading away over the throng of clothes slashed across the floor,
the tender tug and tear of youth dulled by the commonplace,
youth banished to the dark corners of day-in, day-out,
life recycled and rerun endlessly, youth redefined till sour,
youth shredding away at the sheets of some distant dorm room,
youth shredding any remains of innocence,
youth jumbled into a shapeless mesh balled up on a small bed,
two bodies deforming into one, burrowing through blankets and pillows,
youth fading away with summer smiling.

Treacherous waters wait ahead,
treacherous waters; trembling cold beneath blankets like towels.

The summer smile whispers its last words and watches and waits,
the smile shies away like sheets the next morning.

The summer spins and whirls,
the young mind grasps the occasion and dissolves into sleep,
the young boy wakes up curled like a fetus next to some girl he hardly knows.

Treacherous waters wait ahead,
treacherous waters; trembling cold beneath blankets like towels.

What Do You Hear Now, Walt Whitman? (10)

10

Under a small desk lamp sits the writer,
in only his boxers and shirt, fidgeting through the mess on his desk,
he twitches, the night is young, his alarm clock blares from the other room,
it flashes 3:30 over and over, blinking red eyes in the dark.

His hand smashing his face, yanking his hair to the heavens,
he jabs at the keyboard, he doesn't just type,
he grinds his teeth, he jabs and jabs, his neck aches and he winces;
his hand moves down to his neck to nurse the sore,
but his other hand never refrains, jabbing at the keys, backspace, backspace,
jab, jab, over and over, the cursor blinks back at him from the shining screen,
the only light in the dark room.

What Do You Hear Now, Walt Whitman? (9)

9

The dark sky descents and devours me,
the crescent moon smiles back helplessly -
trapped together we break bread,
my hands tremble and my feet droop endlessly back down.

The fever rings all around and reeks and wrecks,
my clammy hands disintegrate,
my life washes over the bay sky sunset,
the paints of gods breathe all around.

The invitation stands,
people everywhere find reason to dance
but generally tend to run home crying more often that not.
A pretty face fights off tears and sinks sourly into a pair of similarly soft, clammy hands;
the dim evening falls all around me,
filling in the cracks and surrounding me,
solidifying my solidarity -
separating me from the world yet again.

The sky scoffs and awakens,
a sunrise painting gold and purple surrounds me
as I try to forget the sting and stench
of rising to heaven and falling back down;
I have stared all that is good in the eye and slapped it its face,
I am so desperately human.

What Do You Hear Now, Walt Whitman? (8)

8

And now I'm a surrealist painter
and the moon is below me.
I twist and turn, making my way through all the banter,
the crowd all ignores me.
The dazing lights,
the buzzards crooning on country porches
while all the girls are hapless and distraught
over open corpses.
Death is but a number;
the world frowns and crumbles,
rockets launching through the ceiling.

I feel a pinch in my nerves –
the twilight shifts and shakes, but never falters.
The dim day avoids me,
the earth rotates and rumbles,
skyscrapers crash and crumble to the ground
to the dismay of tiny dancers all along the scene.
We wrinkle and smirk,
we try to justify everything,
we try to fix everything
but always come away aching, aching, aching.

I wake up diluted amongst a mess of scabs and crustaceans.
The alcohol still burns from the night after,
the sheets and beddings scattered about the room –
all around me lay people I don’t know,
people pierced and tattooed and drained – all checked out –
bare like my kitchen cabinets and refrigerator.
I stare up at the ceiling looking for rockets,
but they never seem to have left.

What Do You Hear Now, Walt Whitman? (7)

7

And I search for meaning and lose my way –
myself without meaning or path,
myself all vanquished and veiled,
myself all a wreck and ashamed,
myself staring back in the mirror.

If you look in someone’s eyes long enough you’ll notice they’re not made of colors,
but oceans and galaxies,
vast and unexplored,
endless and uncharted.
You’ll see a shining,
you’ll see a light,
you’ll see a reflection
you’ll see souls,
you’ll see God,
you’ll see yourself,
you’ll see the depths of emptiness
and you’ll realize we’re all alone.
And if you try to concentrate on both eyes they’ll blend across the face
and you’ll realize that they’re one.
And the tragedy will no longer be the depth of the emptiness,
but the fact that two oceans,
two vast galaxies ,
exactly the same,
can exist so close together but never meet.

My flame floats just above the endless sea of wax.
It never falters.

What Do You Hear Now, Walt Whitman? (6)

Part 6 of extended poem.

6

OH! When they find me,
wrapped in sheets and sheets of notebook pages!
Laying in the stale soil,
the deep ground naked except for the pages upon pages,
the paper, patient and warm, somehow welcoming,
somehow home for my pen and my thoughts!

Oh! When they find me I hope they cringe and vomit,
naked on the lawn, such a sight,
so blunt it'll be; as if it hasn't been in their faces all along!

Laughter is wicked, poetry is naive,
the helpless scream for escape by bleeding on the page,
strangling the lines for some hope,
that's me! Oh!
Little surprise, really,
it's too bad they'll see too late,
too little, too much, helpless and awed,
hide your children, fret and fear,
watch the wicked waste away on the lawn.

Is it so?

It's too late,
the clock taunts us all,
the sky flashes and flaunts its eternalness,
the sun and the moon in a never ending chase,
the seasons rotate and the waves continue to crash,
the stars all fall but remain uncountable,
the forests burn and tumble but never cease,
the deserts shimmer endlessly,
the lakes lose life but never lose hope,
the sky coughs at the pollution but never chokes,
the glaciers melt but always wait,
the world spins;
our fate remains the same.

Somehow I feel less sad,
some sensation, somewhat serene laying there naked under pieces of paper,
waiting blankly as the world passes by and watches and gasps,
we're all blank in the end,
helpless and fragile,
laying on the lawn,
Oh! that's me,
always ceasing and giving up.

What Do You Hear Now, Walt Whitman? (5)

5

Awww! So tonight the world hangs its head and sighs,
do we finally see what we've done?
The wrinkling ravages and savage human tendencies
and blizzard summers and midnight strokes
and sidewalk bombs and tumbling towers
and empty glasses and jagged rain drops
and soaring cries and naked newborns
and all the decapitated and bloody rivers
and empty bottles and war prisoners
and trembling, trembling children hiding in cribs.
Tonight whispers the words of hope and hell,
tonight sings songs of blues and ruins,
gulps a little before crying endlessly out in open cold.
Heaven hangs lower and strangles the clouds,
the world just spins and twirls like an excited child.

We'll be there, waiting,
falling fast asleep, missing it.

We'll be there, just as empty,
lying in the gutter next to some same sad drunk,
slowly swollen but somehow sincere.

We'll be there, we'll be there waiting.

Awww, the world tingles with disease,
she smiles like normal and pretends to ignore, twirling.
She hurts so much but she goes on spinning.

What Do You Hear Now, Walt Whitman? (4)

part 4 of extended poem

4

Hanging under the dreary moon,
the cats shout shallow like the water squirms
under our kicking feet and connected hands.

Up our hill, cars flying by,
lights blazing and engines blaring.

The cold wanders and wraps us together;
I am home.

The darkness scatters and tempts us,
my hand shakes, your hair shines in the moon light,
the water waits and waits,
the chill air grazes its touch against your back and smiles.
We're the summer ending,
the slow glaze and fall haze and long winter ahead;
we're the beginning and the end,
we're always falling,
always alive and awake,
always fresh and shining like a new day;
we're the shallow shell surrounding the evening,
we're the empty bed clamoring and calling,
the torn and weary night eyes,
we're everything they'll never get back;
all alone fleeing home after a long day of work.

We never sleep,
we see the navy sky as a sign and wait and watch,
we smile as the new sun smothers us,
holding hands and never tired.

I never want to drive a car on the highway up the hill,
never flee for home every night.

This is ours,
slowly fading into the lake,
holding hands,
never growing old or tired,
never falling to sleep or waking up again.

What Do You Hear Now, Walt Whitman? (3)

3rd section of extended poem What Do You Hear Now, Walt Whitman?

3

I can say the soiled sidewalk feels tender,
somehow serene to the troubled tennis shoe,
tearing apart with each step on the troubled path.
Because parallel parking means poverty in these parts,
and the broken glass of liquor stores and the faded glory of allies,
the yellow golden slow shimmer of a faded streetlight -
it all blinds you with bleakness, shuts you out, locks you in,
tells you no, nothing more, I'll tell you when I've had enough.

It only depressing if you let it in
or you let it bleed beneath your skin
like the veiny cracks in the sidewalk frowning at the faint city skyline above.

What Do You Hear Now, Walt Whitman? (2)

part 2 in of extended poem I wrote last year

2

Listen; hear it? Gently creeping
beneath the surface and slowly releasing
its slow waterfall down a pale face onto a pale pillow
under some dim, distant night all alone.
It's breathing, it's caressing the face from which it spewed,
it's rejoicing its new life and its gentle decline.
It knows not why or how, but somehow understands its sad purpose and place.
It remains only a faint wet tingling on the pillow
as the night fades into day.

See, the pain is gone but the stain remains,
and it pierces and pokes and prods all day.
It whistles around every corner a soft, sharp reminder
of the long night alone,
and the slow morning that follows,
and the pitiful breakfast that winks and smiles to no avail.