I'm missing home...

Things are very far away from me right now, as if I am watching silently in the background as events unfold, people speak, hands touch.  I have somehow made everything complicated and ugly and am not sure where to begin the arduous task of cleaning it up.  I seem to recall smiling a lot more in my past lives, the left side of my cheek pulling up a little higher than the right.  Now it seems unwarranted and fake, but I do it anyway because it makes everyone more comfortable.  I'll grin like a Cheshire cat if it means that you won't ask me questions.  I don't have the answers anyway.  Sometimes late at night, I'll sit on my steps smoking a cigarette and looking at the sky, wondering if I am really connected to any one or any thing at all.  Sometimes I tread barefoot into the street hoping that someone I once knew will drive past.  Sometimes I lie awake in bed trying to drag memories from the recesses of my mind, only to find they are blurry and dubbed over.  I'm not even really sure what really happened at this point.  All I know is that I am missing home.

This is the closest of calls...

displaced as always, i can't feel my hands anymore.  i drive for miles unaware of the stops and starts, the bends, the curves, the turns.  i wind up nowhere i want to be. the song continues to play, while i sit dreading having to unbuckle the seat belt, open the door, and plant my feet on the ground.  i am heaven sent, don't you forget.  i am all you've ever wanted...sorry i told. i just needed you to know...i am the cause to all your problems, shelter from cold. we are never alone. coordinate brain and mouth. then ask me what its like to have myself so figured out. i wish i knew... i carry a notebook in pocket in case my brain becomes so full i can't contain the tidal wave of thoughts anymore.  i walk and scribble not seeing where i'm going or who i brush elbows with. i stare at my shoes avoiding the cracks.  my left hand shakes, tired from having to keep up with my head. this is war.  every line is about, who i don't wanna write about anymore...and keeping quiet is hard...oh we're so c-c-c-c-c-c-controversial.  we are entirely smooth.  we admit to the truth.  we are the best at what we do.  and these are the words you wish you wrote down...  i can feel my heartbeat in my stomach and it keeps me up at night.  i am breathing too fast or not at all.  i am putting up a fight to resist the reality they have imagined for me.  i am brokenfragmented and okay with it.  we're concentrating on falling apart. 

Confessions of an Insomniac

The crack in the ceiling is growing larger.  It snakes its way from the edge of the room to the light in the center, carefully avoiding my thoughts haphazardly stapled along the white surface.  At some places it flakes open like scales, exposing its smooth underbelly.  It is dark and blank.  I am dark and frenzied. Sometimes I wonder if it isn't a reflection, or some metaphysical transference, of what is going on inside my head.  I wonder if when it finally breaks open, will I break too?  I stare at it until it is some live thing; some angel, some demon, spreading itself out above me.  I struggle in the sheets.  I close my eyes and count to ten, to fifty, to a hundred, to a thousand.  The static in my head does not subside.  When I was little, I would lie awake in bed and think until my thoughts bled into some strange nightmare-dreamscape, from which I would wake up sweating and crying.  I would think about the fight that my parents had that night, or the fire that could start in the house and slowly consume us all, or the sickness that might grow in my mother and take her away from me, or the gunshots I had heard while on the playground at school that day, or the skating rink I couldn't go to anymore because someone had been killed in front of it...  Now my thoughts are sharper and have picked up speed, gathering momentum the more I become conscious of the world around me.  I think about the women in Juarez waiting for the bus in the dark, the flower workers in Bogota, the goldminers in Brazil covered in dust, the children with AIDS in Africa waiting for medicine that will never come, those being persecuted in Vietnam for their religious beliefs, the pigs in the factory farms who can't move and have never seen the sun shine, the dogs in the shelter waiting to die, those on death row waiting to die, those in the hospital hoping to live, those who are hungry, those who are abused, those who are scared, those who are ashamed, those who are depressed, those who live on the outside and can't buy their way in...I think until there are just words stretched out on to movie screens behind my eyelids.  I don't sleep waiting for an answer--waiting for the words to transform it all into something less painful, less surreal, less dystopic. Now the crack just mocks me.  I roll onto my stomach and bury my face in the pillow and count...to ten, to fifty, to a hundred, to a thousand...

Today...

Today someone asked me

if I had prayed.

I prayed

in silent hope and despair

for Darfur and its blood torn skies

for Juarez and its valley of dry bones

for Afghanistan and its empty ice cream parlours

for Guantanamo Bay and the rusty skeletons of justice

for Tibet and Burma and the persecuted in Vietnam

for Argentina and the bloody coat hangers of the barrios

for the United States and its borders of barbwire and metal factories

for the Earth and her ailments

I prayed

for change.

(EC)

laughter unfastened

overcast and grey
weather for thinking
whether to think or brood
i had been looking lost and tired
top corner dusty edge
color images outlined in black.
i had been staring and wondering
how long ago was it
that i understood how to smile like that
head back open throat eyes shut
laughter unfastened
an object in motion
will stay in motion
until someone breaks her heart
trying to capture the moment.
in freeze frame
now not even remembering
how it began
or the basis for laughter.
who had thought
to steal the moment through the lens
so I was stuck fast
tangled in the sunlight forever.
other pictures gathered on these walls
exist only as stage productions
forced smiles learned over time.
we make pretty pictures happen
same teeth
same eyes
same frames
immune to feeling
discerning happiness through frozen limbs
is an undertaking
except that top corner shot
from days burned out in summer heat.
take me back under undisturbed
can one force the body to laugh that way again,
or must it always impatiently wait to be still?
anticipating the perfect moment
to free itself from false motion.
staring once more out the window
into deserted dark streets.
staring and wondering
while the sun breaks free from the clouds
to finally be trapped in the sky

brief update of sorts

despite all the things that have been happening in my life recently, i have finally found my way back to art. for almost a year, i have not written anything. i couldn't look at a piece of paper, yet alone touch it for fear of what would happen if i began to write. i imagined myself writing that first word, and then breaking down in convulsive sobs, only to have some poor, innocent person find me lying on the bathroom floor in the fetal position with my thumb in my mouth. it was out of fear of what emotions would bubble forth (perhaps ones from which i would not recover) that i stayed away from the thing i love the most.
lately, i have been writing and drawing (yes, i actually have some skill) which has been quite therapeutic for me. therefore, keep an eye out, because i plan on posting some of my "art" on here as well as some new poems/writing samples. try not to be overwhelmed in your excitement.

Nothing with any Certainty

“i know nothing with any certainty,
but the sight of stars makes me dream.
--vincent van gogh

lying back in carpets of grass
drowning in the night sky
pools of blackness and neon puddles
engulf me suspend me protect me
FIELD CLOSED
and my feet don’t seem to mind
i trail the blades of grass
sharp lines between my toes
sharp cuts into my thoughts
the moon refuses to show her face tonight
perhaps she knows i shine enough for both of us
or she is a captive of the same manipulative thoughts
that hold my words for ransom
until i wrap them in suitcases of skin and bones
offering them as ultimate sacrifices
to the ghosts that drift the corridors of the mind
still moments such as these
with the languid breeze
licking my wounds soothing my skin hiding my scars
my skin doesn’t feel unknown to me
the ghosts don’t scream and beckon for payment
with the damp grass at my back
i do not worry of what must be offered next
to appease these abductors of thought
the neon puddles shine unwavering
there is no baggage for me to carry
tonight--EAC

fell asleep with the pen
clenched between my fingers
again last night
the rapid flutter of drug heavy honey eyelashes
and I lost the ability to evacuate
these swarm of bee thoughts
clamoring at my honeyhive
unconsciousness drowned the persistent droning
still I slept with my hand spread
across the page
grasping its smooth finish
like a mason jar half full
my callus broken hands
covering viscous words
still thinking they could
drag me back to inspiration
unyielding
before the beekeeper returned to check
the safety of his buzzing teeming minions.--EAC

Writing from Another Time

a work in progress

-for an old friend-

i know now.
august of last year would be the last time
i would ever see you.
i crave that night street cool breeze lane
where my captivity first began
to begin that night again
just to slow the second hand
as it made shadows multiply
on familiar concrete under possessive summer skies
the sun had started to fall, the air no longer thick and heavy
but moving swiftly over my skin
we were on the creaking wooden porch
me in a swing
you in a chair
blocking my vision occupying my thoughts
while talking to your sister, mouthing inconsequentially,
i intently stared at your face
a face I could remember from
pages of twisted words and compressed thoughts
all this in order to figure out when you started to look so old,
when i started to fell so distant
staring across empty space i found lines, rugged and sharp
that my fingers had never known,
stubble creeping along your chin
that had never brushed against my cheek
i wanted to reach out trace the outline
so i could remember what you felt like in air
what you looked like through the lens of my hand
sitting in that chair so unaware
the old wood creaking, keeping time
i glanced at you once finally
face to face only to find myself bombarded
by my bondage to you
at that moment my eyes decided
it was too monumental to ever do that again
profiles are safer when the stars are out
safer than the dark pools i had to face,
the dark pools that keep me chained to that swing
oscillating perpetual limbo with you in the same scene
only we pretend to be adults now—older than our memories
when time ceased to matter, the house lights extinguished,
we drifted into the street, a ritual we had learned
when we were still new
when the sky always threatened to keep me from you
your friend who had always lived up the street
joined us as we sat staring at the stars
talking about the past, about the lives we longed to relive
this was not the space where one spoke of the future
or the present that was running us down, hunting us
the street was a time machine keeping us frozen
in old fears and comforting insecurities
you eased down beside me with familiar weight
i felt my body relax under your presence
i couldn’t look at you or the moment might steal away
into the cover of the trees never to be recovered
never to be felt as it freed my skin
up the street friend raged on about money and capitalism
fuck the system mantras we had come to dwell on
over years of jaded living
nothing matters dropping on the wind
why am i here’s scraping on the cement
i just considered the holes in the sky
thinking of a night a few years past
when we still had intentions.
i had stood under those same stars
and watched you disappear a thousand times over
the stars had not changed and neither had i
i was older in my skin less happy
less aware of where my feet were
where my mind had traveled
but i was still frozen with you there beside me
still the same person who held your face in my hands
so i wouldn’t forget who you were
so i could always find your face tattooed on my hands
while my mind moved miles above us
you placed your hand over mine
i couldn’t even look at you
for fear that I might break and seep into you
i just smiled and linked my fingers with yours
it didn’t matter that we no longer were
it didn’t matter that we may not ever be
in the early hours of the night i just wanted
to remember what safety felt like and
how the stars looked hanging in the sky--EAC 2004

I wonder how much farther I have to go. I wonder where we are--what is going on below us. There are people going about their lives and I want to jump out of my skin trapped in this little metal tube. I got stuck in the shitty seat by the engine and my whole body vibrates. My free diet coke stagnates on my seat tray. Not to mention the annoying man beside me who keeps asking me questions about my life. I live here. I work there. Yeah, I've seen that movie. I don't want to talk. I just want to sit and be nervous. I stopped trying to read the five dollar paperback I bought at the store before we left. I'm not even processing the words, just turning the pages hoping that time will speed up...just until I get there.

I'm almost there. I can't see anything out of the window. Just black and the blinking light on the wing of the plane. I've started biting on my nails. I can't sit here anymore. We have to be close. I've been waiting hours to hear the flight attendant announce our arrival. Actually, I've been waiting months to make my arrival.

It was one of those things--those things I had to do regardless of what anyone thought. I had to go. I had to get out of that place--I couldn't breathe in that place. I didn't even feel guilty when I bought the ticket. Just point and click and it was done. I didn't tell anyone though. I just left. Nothing mattered, except the need to escape. I needed to be anywhere but home.

The pilot it talking. I don't hear the words. Blah, Blah, Blah..Temperature...Blah,Blah, Gate...Customs...Blah, Blah. I've moved forward in my seat, so I can see out the window. Still nothing.

I'm not even sure how I made it to this point. There were mornings I couldn't even get out of bed. I had to sleep with the t.v. on, because waking up to blackness brought reality crashing down around me. I stopped listening to music, because it only made me think of you, of the time we were losing, the time we had lost. I contemplated Prozac. I contemplated vodka and rum. I wasn't as strong as you.

I'm doing better now--now that I'm heading your way. Finally, the blackness has shifted. A thousand points of light glitter and fade below me. I know that somewhere in the yellow and gold, you are waiting for me to arrive.

It feels like we are always waiting to arrive. I just want to get there.