[Split]

Phenomenon
02/08/2013

[not my best work, just my latest... For namix's thing]

i caught a glimpse downtown,
movie scene rewrote in winter ides,
instead of listening, drowned out its picturesque designs
with SepSe7en's rhymes and unfocused eyes.
not getting used to the phase we've defined,
hesitance that erased a generation's drive-
I'd rather eyeball an Epinephrine pen
than see my Twitter name trend-
see, I'm bitter again, it's this miscreant phase,
tired of glimpses of the past but nothing remains,
it's not society's fault, no scapegoat to blame,
but yo, same note- it makes deja vu strange-
am I reliving summer songs from Boston
or what the TV convinced us we'd long forgotten.
culture's built around a golden age
whose yellow details stain every fresh page,
the phenomenon of lies we've accepted with praise,
quotes- the lexicon for conveying cliches,
artificial displays, emotions relayed,
catch a single thing authentic-

she caught me mid-sentence and said
she'd known me before, dishonest at best,
but hidden inside a promise was expressed
conscious, unscripted, tied at opposite ends,
then just pretend that it'd always been tied.
hands slightly misaligned-
take a moment, revel in infinite time,

unspoken complaint, workings of fate,
the nervous refrain of every first date-
buried regardless of duration of stay,
and the best we can say is it's hard to explain?
it's a focal mistake- past's presence delayed,
hung on fingertips so long, we haven't opened today.
bus rides, Lowell light displays,
catch a familiar face lined with a nameless gaze
spinning reticent yarns in the safety of age-
honest lies, a phenomenon entertained


so it goes
1/24/13


"The moment one forms an idea of a thing and successfully catches one of its aspects, one invariably succumbs to the illusion of having caught the whole."

It was the voicemails, I thought, hanging on the tone for closure..
There's the trail- displayed in photos, perfumy clothes' odors.
Park benches, etched hearts. Where it started, lost it in the take over.
Just last week we shared meaning, best intentions, something happened.
Last remaining traces, far stretches, baseless conjectures made way for plans,
The dance of kind gestures, defined better with every day and synapse.

Yet something stays the same.

Lake Winthrop's beaches, sand where faces age, footprints fade in footpaths.
Twelve steps, they say don't look back, but I could say the same-
There's no blame to accept. No nuances to explain away.
But there's a time and a place for everything anyways, so get over it-
Sobered up from many things- hope, her kisses, close company,
Unfocused love for the limits of redundancy. How passive were we...
Seemed seamless. Find contentment for a minute, then just its absence...
A mistake one or the other made, a lesson I shoulda grasped then.
It's all too ephemeral, the ease with which tensions pass,
Fingerprints on glass and smudges of love's opinions of facts-
Past tense is eventual. The fleeting grasp of amnesiacs,
cause time's a state. An emotion to hate, a secondhand clothes rack,
Just borrowing moments- then strangers ask for their moments back--
I catch words we should've spoken drifting slowly past,
but I deserve every verb, adjective, that lacked the right rhyme,
... it wasn't love. Infintessimal mentions on the tongue of life,
Father time? Yeah, you can fuck his wife, purest pleasure,
But then the months rectify the sin in measures of remembrance.
A year went by, relearned independence, a syllable, a sentence,
Single but willing to pretend it was like the summer had no end,
But then, as paths often do- they intersected at our expense.

Her hair's a bit longer, face a little less pretty,
Just the grind of the somber middle-women of pity-
Both in the city now, but she screamed beach weather,
Something still the same, a familiar pressure
I asked her how she was and she said she was doing better,
Then-- I thought what we had was special, or real,
And she said "What was left unsaid? I'd felt all there was to feel.
To be real, I haven't thought about us since October,
Isn't young love something dumb to lose sleep over?"
Something stays the same. A disconnect, what is,
and what I recollect. Just a glimpse. That's all it'd ever been.




Skylit (AOWL S2 vs. Geno, W11-1)
I'm sorry, up front. As sure as this globe's neutral cerulean tint,
This isn't an aria for love. Not tragically-flawed unduly remiss,
it's all the thought from above fused in a sketch
as the sun drew me traveling fog upon illusory pitch...

Sixteen was my age. By the third or some-th date,
We quickly explained we'd 'just hang,'
and relaxed where the sand missed the lake.
With embarrassing shake, dropped a palm on her thigh.
I'd brought a (finely aged) water bottle of Skyy-
Alexa... paper-rocked harmonica eyes,
Rough radiant slate, with lineal faults of glassy azure-
and we talked 'just' to listen to the laughter of words...
the sun wasn't set, next to yellow-red rays in the pond.
I cut the inappropriate slang with a cough,
despite the enormous ration of shots.
In light of transportation-based costs,
we were just a walk from her home.
Falling in close, I thought of the pause of my touch,
and lovers and love is brushed as broad as dawn and the dusk.
I'd caught in her eyes. The light sway of a sigh,
this was one kind of way strangers say a good night.

In the winter, I stood in an unravelled apartment....
We'd met in the park over casual coffee, among the rabble of Harvard.
Caught up fast over scatter-brained grey matter reserves,
the growing pains college days can have on your nerves...
Her eyes were faded navy, spangled in a glowing granite explosion.
It was maybe the angle... or I'd forgotten the tint ages ago in synaptic erosion,
Friends see apology framed as a distance. A gap with width of an ocean,
falling in stasis- crawling haze like the flurries as the blizzard approaches.
In shallow, miserable focus I slipped in my coat- she adjusted my tie.
Wrapped in the black of midnight alone, I looked up and laughed in the cold
this is just a way strangers cuss their good nights.

Shaded by funeral parlor, we escaped the sound of "til death"
And her eyes were alive, defined with a new color again.
I never had noticed, everything changed in the suns many crests,
but nothing becomes something from which it doesn't begin.
For the sake of time... I kissed her as love might intend,
as sure as her eyes are as blue as summer day sky in decline,
I knew this is one way strangers delay their goodbyes.