a bridge to nowhere

walking in-between streets, bars, and bathrooms. shooting pool. concentrating on the feeling of the present. we were visionaries. we made love our focus. circling, repeatedly. conversing into the early morning air, the feeling of breath with a trickle of nostalgia burning the backs of our throats. we overcame our fears of each other and exposed our lives underneath streetlamps, gave up our security for freedom. what a tasteful moment. what this night was for. a choice. between fear and love.



the sun rises before our eyes and the fleeting feeling of understanding makes its last gasps heard. we marvel at the warmth, the light, the moment. and we realize we're crossing paths. but we can't stand on this bridge forever. bridges were made for movement, to travel across. yet we can use them for so much more. for stopping and wondering, and thinking aloud. for balancing between two points, to walk a tightrope. sometimes to fall. to death. bridges are places where sometimes things go to die.



a cure for sadness? maybe. a cure for pain? no. there is no cure for pain. we simply fall prey to the experience of pain. no drug, no feeling, no belief, no conviction, no god can cure pain. we feel pain, we have pain. we live with pain. and that is all. so live with it, and make use of it. mix it with your creative forces to make something beautiful. let the sun rise again in your life.

Peace and Love

Found love (found ...?)
Saw my mistake
Broke walls of pain to walk again
I saw the dream
I saw the wake
We shared it all
But not the take

I took it all
I took the oath
I took it all
Til I had most
I took what's left
I gave it breath
I had it all once
I gave it back

e.v.

conflict/ed

the reality of being cut-out, and cut off from her passionate desire ... it feels like the taste of the metallic-y beer she shared with me the other night. it rolls around inside your mouth, an alkaline sensation, your taste-buds working in a different way, dealing with the difference between the full, hearty hoppy flavor of an IPA and the cheap carbonated mixture of water and aluminum. how did this happen? i'm now at the point where understanding that question may only be out of curiosity ... but, no. if i'm being honest, i want to know how and why. did she ever love me? yes. does she still love me? only in a metallic way. do i still love her? yes. i'm working at falling out of love with her. i have to. for my own well-being. it doesn't make sense to pursue someone who doesn't want me. but what about love? if i love her, and i do, doesn't love push through and compel me to do things that may not have my own well-being in mind? but the reality, the metallic reality of her denial of me as her lover, sets in and reminds me that she has given me an answer. and the answer is no. she doesn't want me. she has spoken it to me, written it to me, but most of all her actions and non-actions have spoken volumes. i'm not a priority in her life. i come after scrabble and climbing trees. and despite what she says, she says she loves and cares, her actions are inconsistent with her words. but really, this is all from my perspective. it seems so confusing to me because of my love for her. and i forget when i'm thinking these things through that she is not conflicted about her lack of consistency; she no longer loves me the way she used to and it seems that to her my behavior is confounding. i imagine that from her perspective i seem a bit silly, loving her, wanting her, when she treats me the way she does. she said i don't love you. she said i was never her boyfriend. i treated her poorly for the first time and brought her past back into her life. i intentionally hurt her because i have been in pain for 2 months now. i wanted her to be in pain, because she didn't seem to be experiencing any, or at least if she was, she wasn't sharing that with me. she has things she needs to change if she wants to have and maintain healthy relationships with people. i think she even recognizes this, but she wants to live her fucking life the way she wants to fucking live it and she is not going to change for anyone but herself. that's not something the person i met 9 months ago would have said. the intense girl who asked me what i wanted in life. who asked me interesting questions. who so willingly shared herself with me. and as open as she was for 6 months, and as free as she was in sharing herself, she always kept a piece of herself hidden from me. parts of her i was not allowed to know. and now it's as if she is hiding her whole self from me. she accused me of being desperate, and she is right. i am desperate to be with her again. she knows what i want in life. i want love. and i felt that love with her. my experience tells me it was real. and now the closest i get to that feeling is when we sleep together. she wrote me a list. 10 years down the road, what will i have done? i can't be somewhere 10 years from now and look back and have any regrets about her. i have to know that i exhausted every avenue in pursuing her, in letting her know how i feel about her, because love deserves this kind of attention. i don't want to look back on my life and know that 10 years ago i fell in love and there was something i could have done to change her mind. but i know i can't do that. i can't change her mind. she is explicit in her desire to do what she wants, when she wants. and perhaps my love for her does look desperate to her, foolish to her. just as a beer goes flat after it's been left out too long, my love for her will dissipate as she continues to keep me at a distance. all this is to say, i suppose, a repeat of the conclusion i have already reached. i have to force myself to stop loving her in a romantic way. i'll always love her, for the rest of my life. that's just how i operate. i don't cut people off or shut them out. i know the pain of that happening to me, people have cut me out of their lives in the past. my own father. i won't do that to someone. i won't do it to her. i'm still in love with her, and she is not in love with me. what a weird fucking life. now i suppose i need to concentrate on not falling into complete cynicism; i'm already enough of a cynic. now pain is present in my life and it would be so easy to do that.

i love her.

another day

feeling much better today. i made a simple realization: i am right and she is wrong. and there is nothing i can do to change her mind, so all i can do is move on. hard pill to swallow, but it's really the only way to go.

being careful

it's hard not to think that every word that comes out of her mouth is complete bullshit. i try and keep aware that i may not be judging fairly, that whatever i hear or read is being clouded by pain. but then i return to her reasons, and bullshit is confirmed. and it makes every other syllable that she produces, in the lovely way that she does it, seem like shallow nothingness.

fuck III

how do i not do what i want? i want to pursue her, i want to be with her. she doesn't want to be with me ... how do i not pursue her? how do i not want her? how can i go against my clear desire to want her, to want to be with her?

fuck II

fuck. i should be working on thesis revisions right now, but i can't stop thinking 'why?'. why doesn't she want me? i've received some answers, but they never answer that question 'why?'. i guess even if i did know why, it wouldn't improve my state of mind. i guess i just have to digest the fact of it. but fuck ... it is fucking painful to love someone, to want to be with them, and have them not reciprocate that desire. coupled with no clear reason why, my mind can't stop running and re-running everything about her through my memories. i can't focus on anything else. i am in love with her.

fuck

i am so fucking frustrated right now. i met someone, i loved her and she loved me back. now i love her, but she doesn't love me in the same way. i don't understand it. repetitive human condition. i'm part of it for the first time. art makes more sense to me now.

picture me rollin' ... am i clear to you?

Our valiant warrior, hero
dismissed, weakened, despaired
residual loss and consequence
a textbook analysis of the cross

How close can we get
to an understanding
no lack, no void to guide us
to build a life of inspiration

He bends down, tired of carrying it all
it fell, and he falls
down, down, down

No forever, no beginning
a loss of substance says it all
to melt away the hardened edge
to glimpse the sweet surrender

To travel toward something
together ... not in the jest of things
so in the absence of certainty we slither into
the colorful colors of spring

He bends down, tired of carrying in full
it fell and he stops
down, down, down

To take another approach
to begin with a weekend morning
in mourning, taking a breath
but your eyes don't cloud your perspective

And so we coalesce in the night
excited, fatigued, running up the walls of improbability
takin' it up, takin' it in
surrounded by the beats that shake us

He bends down, tired of carrying the load
it fell and he supposes
down, down, down

Almost careless in the palm
so how many hands keep laying on
the prayer to god that falls beside
until we realize ... it falls inside

All I ever wanted was your life
said we would never lie
and it took a miracle to reveal
that instead of light ... there was a sky

He bends down, tired of carrying the plight
it fell and he imagines
down, down, down

Taken in a million chances
concrete stances, littered with objects
tough, take it all, the experience of the street
it's so serious i'm laughing

spaces taken into manipulation
contemplation of what it means to be
walls constructed, folded into themselves
how long will the walk reveal the form

He bends down, tired of lifting it all
it fell and doesn't settle
down, down, down

When walking away seems seasonable
to accord with the change in weather
to assimilate the brethren
of an ancient skin tone

To reach heights that color seems to miss
to base any conclusions on a rhythm
a lesson to be applied
to take an amendment

He bends down, reflective of having it all
it fell and he pretends
down, down, down

An instance of separation
takes its toll upon us all
to find and decipher any past regrets
as it's seen through the present tense

To take to wild, bearing rituals of precedence
and destroy what's beleaguered, manufactured
all within the minds of men
our way of meeting in the middle

He bends down, satisfied with the strain
it fell and he remains
down, down, down

the day i tried to die ...

is honesty all that hard to come by,
forthrightness in a sea of maybes

to ask and not to tell,
to give all and to quell ...
a sea of desire and long lost camaraderie
it's all been decided beforehand,
and i'm lost in the process

to be seen, but not be heard
the word of children
subsumes the conversation
and truth never bubbles to the surface ... as it should

one word, once spoken, forever broken
never told, was it once?

i'll take you around the trying
to give and to have and to hold
another subject willing,
but another year's spellbound in the mold

of love, of trust, of states of breath
and i'll hold this ammunition
i'll hold it tight around my neck
to gasp, a last 'i told you so'

yet it doesn't seem to complicate
the simplicity, with which you choose to lie