ransomed

i am home. i am exhausted. and when i have time tomorrow, i am going to talk about What Happened In New York.

stay tuned.

poem in october by dylan thomas

for my favorite month of the year, one of my most favorite poems of all time.

    It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
    And the mussel pooled and the heron
            Priested shore
        The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall
        Myself to set foot
            That second
In the still sleeping town and set forth.

    My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
    Above the farms and the white horses
            And I rose
        In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.
High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
        Over the border
            And the gates
Of the town closed as the town awoke.

    A springful of larks in a rolling
Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling
    Blackbirds and the sun of October
            Summery
        On the hill's shoulder,
Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly
Come in the morning where I wandered and listened
        To the rain wringing
            Wind blow cold
In the wood faraway under me.

    Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
And over the sea wet church the size of a snail
    With its horns through mist and the castle
            Brown as owls
        But all the gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales
Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.
        There could I marvel
            My birthday
Away but the weather turned around.

    It turned away from the blithe country
And down the other air and the blue altered sky
    Streamed again a wonder of summer
            With apples
        Pears and red currants
And I saw in the turning so clearly a child's
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
        Through the parables
            Of sun light
And the legends of the green chapels

    And the twice told fields of infancy
That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.
    These were the woods the river and sea
            Where a boy
        In the listening
Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy
To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.
        And the mystery
            Sang alive
Still in the water and singingbirds.

    And there could I marvel my birthday
Away but the weather turned around. And the true
    Joy of the long dead child sang burning
            In the sun.
        It was my thirtieth
Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon
Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.
        O may my heart's truth
            Still be sung
On this high hill in a year's turning.

- Dylan Thomas

no hmo

ensurance.

i'd rather be shopping around for that.

too bad no one sells it.

damage's weight

i almost went to sleep without writing something. i decided i was going to stop doing that.

i noticed you were looking around, for a few minutes, the other day. 4 pages in, anyway. 4 pages in isn't enough to find what you were looking for. if you were looking for it. go back a month or two, it's there. there have been more, but i haven't posted them. saving them for a rainy day years hence, when you no longer burn at the back of my throat, when you're no longer barely obscured by clouds.

when i've untied the emotions and can look at it all without them. when i'm "familiar enough with my ghosts to no longer care when they leave me." as i said once, once upon a time.

i've had my moments of it, too. moments of weakness. of wishing forgiveness or absolution. moments when i have scoured the corners of the interweb for a glimpse of you. but you've erased those trails surprisingly well. and all that ties me to you currently are the spam emails i keep getting from your (old?) gmail account, with some long and dubious link in them for some magical thing that has changed your life.

even though i know they're not really from you, when they show up, i still get that strange lump in my throat. that's how i know it's too soon.

that's how i know i probably shouldn't post this, that it might be a bad idea to let you know that i know that you were here, even if it was only for 4 minutes and 38 seconds.

i miss the way you could make me laugh so easily. i miss laughing easily. i miss being close to you, even though i wasn't. oh, damn nostalgia. it's always the shiny luster over everything that was wrong. makes it all look good from so far away.

i just wish we could be friends. it's come to that, at least. i'm not bitter anymore. regretful, but not bitter.

run

these words 
are an exorcism.


i distill myself 
in poetry,


until you have: 
me,
complete and
enigmatic enough


that i
no longer need
to be here.


and when
that is done,
like sylvia,
like emily,
i will 


run


to the quick
and eager dark.


heed the call
of some need
to discover


if i can still
be,


without all
the masks and
the voices.