Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Portrait of a Lady


“I have saved this afternoon for you”;
And four wax candles in the darkened room,
Four rings of light upon the ceiling overhead, 5
An atmosphere of Juliet’s tomb
Prepared for all the things to be said, or left unsaid.

Inside my brain a dull tom-tom begins
Absurdly hammering a prelude of its own,

Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance,
Admire the monuments,
Discuss the late events,
Correct our watches by the public clocks.
Then sit for half an hour and drink our bocks.

Now that lilacs are in bloom
She has a bowl of lilacs in her room
And twists one in his fingers while she talks.

And youth is cruel, and has no remorse
And smiles at situations which it cannot see.”

“Yet with these April sunsets, that somehow recall
My buried life, and Paris in the Spring,
I feel immeasurably at peace, and find the world
To be wonderful and youthful, after all.”

You are invulnerable, you have no Achilles’ heel.
You will go on, and when you have prevailed
You can say: at this point many a one has failed.
I take my hat: how can I make a cowardly amends
For what she has said to me?

With the smell of hyacinths across the garden
Recalling things that other people have desired.
Are these ideas right or wrong?

My self-possession gutters; we are really in the dark.

The Waste Land


Sometimes something as simple as poetry excerpts remind me there's a point to living and that life is beautiful. I used to worry that that was a dumb reason to live, but now I realize there is NO reason to live, no point in life. And that's not depressing, it's wonderful and liberating. My brain has been thinking the wrong way all alone; it's time to reprogram. Every time i feel a stress about a decision, or try to make a choice for the "right" reason, I need to stop and look at what I'm doing and thinking, and why. This is exactly what Ayn Rand meant by selfishness.

I sat with Jason drinking wine, listening to a beautiful song, sitting in the sun, and I realized that's exactly what I want an thats exactly the point of life. Everything I love, everything I want to do..I should do it, embrace it, and enjoy it. Of course, there are limits to consider which is where it gets tricky. But that's okay.


APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering 5
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.


What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish?

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, 40
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.

THE Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Glowed on the marble


The wind
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed. 7

After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places

He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience





Thursday, March 5, 2009

Novelization

My cold stare isn't watching you, it's literally penetrating you. Going right through, as though you don't exist. Because, to me, you don't. Or I wish you didn't. Either way, I'm not interested in who you are. I sense that there could be something interesting on occasion, but this is a rare flicker in the darkened swamp of my daily rounds. I can't describe what the waitress looked like, I don't know what color shirt the girl next to me had on this morning.

And yet, when I want to, I can turn on the charm. Make you intoxicated by me, curious for more, feel lucky for the opportunity to know me. The cruelty that exudes from my pores gives me some sort of allure and mystery. This is how I catch my prey...they come to me, but only when I want them to.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Oleanders in a glass of milk

Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow. Never expect to outgrow loneliness. Never hope to find people who will understand you, someone to fill that space. An intelligent, sensitive person is the exception, the very great exception. If you expect to find people who will understand you, you will grow murderous with disappointment. The best you'll ever do is to understand yourself, know what it is that you want, and not let the cattle stand in your way.
— Janet Fitch

Her hatred glittered irresistibly. I could see it, the jewel, it was sapphire, it was the cold lakes of Norway.
— Janet Fitch