I feel like im running out of descriptive dialogue with myself. Its okay, theres not really a need for it. Just the radiation outside is buzzing. It's the good kind, the life kind thats startling to the touch and ear. A woman at the checkout counter smiled her teeth at me and asked if I was in the program. I said eight long months and whats so long about it. Time has slowed, rendered memory supreme. Death is one molasses memory dripping upward it feels sublime. I felt guilty walking out the store as if I had blasphemed in front of a stranger and whats worse was that it was for no good reason but to make conversation. The sorta way we make history out the mundane details of weather. "Eight months. Feels like a long time" drawling on the last half with emphasis, pursing in fake anguish. It hasn't been long. Eight months short hasn't been enough time.

Easter Everywhere

I sniff a spring in the air. It's been such a long long while. First came the bud-heavy dogwoods, exhausting the atmosphere with the scent of warmth. At least thats what I smells like to me. The smell of a giant placid white cushion butressing summer and the descent of fall. Lately though its been the foreign cherries and the texas quince catching the twinkle in my eye. They werent dead never dead they were always here, the secret to life is patience; waiting as an art. Can you wait fully? Can I wait fully I meant to say. And I am learning. I forgot that underneath the dull sheath of bark and antique rotting leaves are the future memories of spring. Even in the stark state of winter it's there. I forget like falling asleep. I forget my heart is brimming there too. Underneath. And blooming too with blood as rich as apples skin and just as red.

St. Valentine

I don't know why but I'm sipping on another stale cup of coffee. In loneliness I make a friend out the stuff. Sometimes we feud though as the habit of running my fingers through my hair and massaging my face becomes a tic and my eyes gravitate into black gallows, my skin flushes red, and all hell breaks loose on summit of my head. Always room for one more cup though. I've become accustomed to even falling asleep on heavy doses. The heart beats rapidly until drowning out all other noise and sleep becomes me. Particular things have to fall into place for that to happen that: certain hours of the day must have been burned correctly with no late naps, or delayed wakings, and the reasonable limit of coffee consumption must be breached so as to send the patient into a catalytic reversal of symptoms, pushing the brain past normal wakeful vitality into a realm of lucid latency. It's something that happens by chance; if I shot for that particular phenomenon every night I'd never make it to sleep. I've heard somewhere people describe it as increasing the intensity of your dreaming state, but I think that misses the point entirely, at least for me. The joy I find out of it is that it simply makes me sleep furiously. It's as if I can condense whole sessions of deep sleep into a matter of an hour or two, and the morning after I have the strength of ten men. Not quite, but it is pleasurable. Tonight might be one of those nights. I'm not really thrilled about it, despite my elaborate description of the whole process just now. I'm more concerned about the proportionally worse backfire that can occur when the detailed elements of its creation don't align, and instead I'll spend the whole night twitching legs scratching eyebrows and sweating, gleaming at the anxiety condensing on the windowpane, god one hour two hour, death dawn makes its appearance and the rest of the day is delayed motor senses, white cream light obscuring the subtlety of faces, and the bitter loneliness of insomnia I'm so used to by now. My concern is well-founded. Fortunately though I sacrifice for things worth tending to now, like my life for instance. Action is a life-saver. The more occupied I am the less the sting of my past corrodes my battery heart. I cram every second with motion until I'm sick with time appeasement, nearly vomiting am vomiting abstractly out my eyes all the things I force myself to do as simple as taking out the trashing and counting pennies. Mostly it's in an effort to avoid the aforementioned terror of lying in bed, hopefully I'll be too exhausted to care.

Newspaper snow.

The snow is gone already. A few haphazard boulders put together in the ecstasy of yesterday's miracle shone in the sun. It's glaze was wearing thin by evening and melted into retreat back towards the earth. I have to admit I always want the excitement to stay with me, but it can't. It's the magic of it. The sheer quickness makes my head spin. Did I watch it all, can I catch it all? If I had a photograph I'd burn it to match the vanishing and sweetness of that retreat. Burn it while its unfolded. Take the newspaper unfold it and squash it. Roll it into a ball and drop it onto the edge of your tongue and chew it, it has the pulpish taste of the Eucharist. You might need the energy. I can't tip toe around the moment anymore; it's sharpness made ever so more exquisite by its unpredictable exit. I scratch my head and wonder if it's all gone, seeing a patch here, a second dripping there, only to realize that in doing so it's already gone. I suck myself into drought embarrassingly in search of yesterday's joy, and have a tendency to spend my day the way I have today.

It's not unusual that I forget my name these days and I have a slight headache. My fingers ache with the odor of rotting smoke rising up into my nostrils. I had broken down and bought a pack of cigarettes. It's aroma reminds me of people and most importantly rising and falling action I so desperately seek but where are the rooms and where are the rooms? I've been getting bored, so I trace out my map to a few department stores I frequent and where I like to finger the pages of magazines longingly. There must be a dozen of them and they all look the same, mostly full of strangers in pea coats and warm sweaters lassoing a child or two if they have them. This is what happens when I have free time. I can't grasp on to the bare hand I see, I waste gas and burn time under my nose asking where all the money is. It's strange how even architecture can bear down in shame and doubt when I'm in that mood, each house peering out in rebuke and sidewalk snarling with boredom at me. Awkward purple swinging shudders hang in indifference as people slam the doors I watch them leave. I get agitated at street signs for serving no purpose, or parse out ignorance from even the ambiguity of a four way stop. Heaven stop me. I turn the shame on this poor city. Where I live in Atlanta is a newly renovated part of town, surrounded mostly by the slowly decreasing but ever present decay of rural land and people. I used to bemoan this sort of struggle back home as country begets rust, afraid the asphalt and motor oil would spoil the idyllic, but as long as there are people there never was an idyllic, and my home's not unique. I am so naive. Obsessing over the tragedy wouldn't change a thing. And here are the other neighborhoods of collapsing apartment complexes and furnaces. You can see them by the light of the interstate, their backsides exposed to show the potential of cinder blocks and arbitrary arson. The renovated part of town consists merely of convenient shopping centers and parchment thin condominiums, deviated only by the immense acreage of parking lots stretched out bitterly across the plain. It's quaint at first and with a wallet full of cash it almost seems inviting. But I still hear the train breathing in the night and the cinder blocks here are only painted white. What am I to do about it though? My outrage is the equivalent of pin drop in a vacuum, raging against the night. Simply deflate it in the ease of morning. Boil some water for Chrissakes. Make some oatmeal and thank fate for such a chance. Eat a newspaper, you might need the energy.

Button Daffodils

I was taking a piss dreaming about the snow outside and when I yawned outward I whispered the words in pissing ecstasy moan "daffodils". Outside lay a billion white daffodil buttons all one top of each other, resting and caressing themselves till the evening dips below freezing. I hadn't imagined it waking up this morning, stumbling out to my car, stumbling out with my keys into the ignition as my hands were blunted by the burn of the cold. I went to work where I awkwardly folded cardboard slats magically into boxes. It was clearly the work of an occupied and distracted human, bent sides neglectfully hammered into one another, the lines of organization hemmed no better than a lightning bolt. I think to myself, "God, what would a person think if they saw my disarray? Do I look drunk or am I just sweating this way?" But the tense and angular affectations of my morning dissolve away. I make a mad delivery, dashing out to the carnival trash of rural Atlanta where a public school hides amongst weeds and Baptist Churches. I cursorily ring the doorbell (yes, schools now have doorbells and cameras and electronic gates) until an unknown Wizard of Oz politely unlocks the secure front door letting me inside. Quite self-consciously I can't decide to take the approach of absolute conspicuousness, or to covertly make my way towards the Front Office, unsure which one sets off the most potential child-predator alarms in the average American's paranoid mind. Luckily it's right at the entrance and an overweight assistant assails me before I get lost. Inside the office we spend a quality amount of time inspecting to her satisfaction (not mine) the contents and addresses of each sandwich bag, insuring the each little Charlie Brown or Peppermint patty has a delicious dill and one serving bag of chips. They do. As she scrambles to round up my eventual tip of three dollars, I pace around on the mosaic blue carpet, occasionally glancing at a flat-screen that I notice is broadcasting the approach of our imminent snow storm. A few nomadic students wade in and out through the hall, as starry-eyed as I am waiting for the first signs of winter dust. I wave to them, waving back, hoping to grasp longer that feeling, the intensity of waiting so precious to a child whose seconds are longer and days are forever.

Sitting up against the wall another overweight woman talks to herself when I decide to butt in with bullshit conversation about the snow storm. I catch every other word she says until I get bored, noticing that less and less her words have anything to do with snow and more and more to do with a friend she needs to call, done her wrong, something something. I still pace and just nod intermittently at her and shoot ignorant smiles repeating, "yeah, yeah" feigning with agreement and hoping but not praying that in the midst of her mumbling she isn't posing me a question. Finally she stops talking, coughs out a laugh of entertainment at whatever she had just said and stares at me waiting for my response or commentary, right when the other ball shaped women calls me over to the desk, hands me the cash, and I leave straight staring towards the door speechless at anyone who acknowledges my exit. I make it back to work, the story of each delivery always silent and my own little memory I tuck away in my back pocket. Who needs to know? Fran asks if I want to do side work. Not really. Okay. Can I go home, I have things to do(bullshit). Of course, see ya tomorrow.

I leave. I don't even bother to eat. I hardly do anymore, seems such a waste. Eating food is so evanescent, like plucking the petals off a rose. Of course you can always make more food, grow more roses, but that one you just took, you can't get it back, and with each new rose its intensity vanishes. I quiver. A few things happened between then and now, mostly parking lot dramas of reversing and stopping and inaudible expletives to me and God, but most importantly the keen observation of falling snow. It begins delicately, miming the innocence of Eden in tone. Earth works its way out in time, showing mud from the wear of feet and wheels. The contamination of time is inevitable and I love it too, but those evaporating moments of both snow and beauty seen by my eyes refresh a dignity and respect for the brevity of life I so often lose. I had dreams of the ocean last night, alone. Tonight I'll pray for the sea of snow to take me in.

Night Dreaming. Day dreaming in the witching hour. The line between the dead and the living is pinch thin as I watch my grandmother coruscate between the realms. My brain observing is blended in, and a perfume of florid hospital sterility irritates my nostrils. Nothing settles her and me. Even the pathetic clicking of this here entry startles her scant awareness so much as to hiss and twiddle her damaged arms, peering up at me in parched blue eyes. Who am I? Am I the distance between her and my father, twice over? Not even that. The only substantial connection I can grasp there is a faint physical, biological one. She birthed my father, my father begot me, and so on. Not even that to grab on. Our bodies dissolve and palpitate into the atmosphere, what little is there left besides the moment of observation? Our history instead is being made in this hospital room right now, where through familiarity the only chance I have at absorbing her is through narcissistic symbolism. How does this experience relate to me, wheres my narrative, etc etc. In what way can I sympathize with another human being without turning their experience into my own abstract lesson? I feel absolutely disconnected, as delayed opportunity through complete self-absorption. So often this is a parable for me; I feel constantly in search of the definitive explanation of what it is I will do, contribute, and its extrapolation is used as an excuse for personality of which I truly have none. I've become obsessed with the idea of taste as personality, as substance. It is true, but what I fail to understand in that equation is that taste is discovered through learning, experimenting, and playing with things through experience. i.e. as a by-product of living well and not something selected prior to, as in an article of clothing before a night out. Otherwise taste will always appear, at least to the initiated, as superficial, unworn, and callow, primarily because of its obsession with being seen, and not really being enjoyed.