Winter

Break is upon me, which just means my inspiration is preparing an offensive in the absence of work's wards. My notebook is finally full so for portability and practicality I'm transitioning to the full keyboard on my phone. I have come to literally carry around poem drafts everywhere I go, working on texts to no one. I do hope I get a new notebook for Christmas though since nothing beats the intensity and intimacy of scribbling by candlelight outside in a whiteout.

On the plane back to jers I started a short story peering out of the window. It began reminiscent of my last short story, published below, but criticism from friends, colleagues, and myself led me to take a new direction, steering away from my poetic comfort. As if rhyme and alliteration give me more credibility. This new approach is an expression of my sense of humor and befuddlement with the world in the same sort of limited-life landscape where everything that is there becomes that much more significant. Anyhoo here's that old story posted up in the spirit of the wasteland outside. I've never written anything quite so dark and pessimistic but that was my full intention. It is followed by a commentary of sorts because I admit it's hard to interpret.

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Slate colored skin, his arms cross his chest, between his hands and his heart he huddles his words. Charred lashes and hairs against the whites of his eyes, the inferno rages inside.

Quaking horrors fill a dark space, screams of birds unseen. The growl of the omnipotent bleeds into the black. An uneasy laughter echoes, angry one moment and the next moment mad.

This is the opacity of his mind.
A crow lands outside his window. The man’s vision is unchanged, he stares at the ceiling where the shadow of his yard’s one tree paints the wall at dusk.
There is no comfort here.

A grove of gray dogwoods once stood where this cabin lies.
The crow flaps onto the shadow of the only tree left unsawed. Its cry brings forty black birds to the branches. These souls of the fallen find solace in the shadow. At this late hour their feathers make the only noise.
Together they fly.

Veiling the trunk and its bare branches in a torrent of dark fire, circling, engulfing, as an avian insect swarm. Like gnats in the air, the crows cluster, feasting on the energy of their brother’s shadow in a ritual of ashen arbor.
A crack resounds as bird and branch fall motionless to the ground.
Like a pack of matches, one strikes, a chain reaction, all the air aflame.

The cabin has no way to understand, but let it be a witness. It contains the man’s world, as large as it grows, and from its logs the crows were born. A box in a field, the birds found their fathers’ bodies stacked in columns and rows. An ancestry of souls. The cabin moans in the wind of the vortex, the birds blur into black.

Windowpanes crack.

Man clutches tighter to the words at his breast, his eyes torn open, he holds his last breath. The book dissolves into the crows’ flame.
Death has destroyed its own name.
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It is supposed to speak to the futility (working title) of everything that we do. huMANity has built a legacy of enslavement, especially now through the written word. The crows are the sons of the free minds (trees) we've destroyed to build our comfort zone and concept of reality in which we find shelter. They also act as the wardens of time. They ensure that all is eventually erased and forgotten. Our consciousness is completely malleable, evident in diversity of tradition which we've made hobby of eradicating.

We (man) wish we could control what we think we wish we could be happy in our ignorance forever, but there comes a time when justice is dealt or nature runs its course. In thinking of the nature of humans as curious but insecure explorers, we will naturally be afraid of what is on the other side of the ocean, of the monsters deep inside our heads but we also have to think about the possibilities. It is important to face this fear and recognize our ultimate power of reason and our ultimate transience simultaneously. Life is designed to end . Like a sailor from the 1300's I imagine that the sea of time too has its monsters and they have their rituals of chance, destruction, creation, and maybe even a sense of justice. Our minds are more subject to complete annihilation than most people understand. I can't help but imagine a creature who perceives a million years in a second. Death doesn't exist save in our words and when we're all dead it won't exist at all. HOORAY!

OKAY that was heady I'm sorry if you hurt. I know I do.

Done - fifth semester at UM
Begun - a period of intensive writing and drawing. no reason to stop.