Portland

He is here, and it is raining. It is Portland. He begins sadly with his protrusile lips to tell me about his yesterday, (in the rain, it is the saddest time to tell a story of a life); on these moist days he will look at me, indicate the dark sky and say, “We need oxygen to breathe. But only when you think about it.”

I am in Kansas City

I am in Kansas City. Kansas City is a place. A long drawn-out kind of place with no purpose to me. It breeds a hatred of unrestrained ventures. This place! This place collapses my comforted spirit. I am no Lewis and Clark. I do not wish to find new corridors to new ideas. Give me my solitude, in a known idea, about a large and known city. Let me walk with a well rehearsed map, traversing its signs, along numbered streets, in search of a deeply referenced corner store, or dilapidated theatre, the stage collapsing under the weight of decade or more players. (I will have purpose then, touch a cleft here, a chip there, the known will be turned anew.) Let me visit these known places, huddled massively together, claustrophobically so. There, will raise in me a new spirit, seeking and touching things not known. I will be shocked into a sense of foreboding and immense pleasure—it will be undesirable among the adventurer, the visionary, as well as the go-between.

they talk of love . . .

They talk of love. They talk of death. To him, both are the same. Not as a suggestion—more like Sansara—for transformation, moving to the next level, or dying to a younger, more uncertain idea bred in his youth. She burns incense; it moves on air, for their souls' craving rumination. They make love in youth.
- - -
It is only the dead that seem exempt from love.

Just a thought.

There will be a day when we reminisce:
We were artists, wearing black
Creating originals, creating anew, even stylishly so.
We will pause for our probable glory
Between the licking of chicken juice from fingers; and think,
“We are the new Gogol and Satre!”
Then one of us will say something psuedo-profound,
Perhaps he will begin to choke and maybe die,
the other will be too afraid, too egocentric to give a pat on the back.
--Another pseudo-artist will be buried in an unpublished grave.

It was far more important to wear Banana Republic,
than to write about it.

Sometimes, there is Creation.

Sometimes, while he is still young, a boy moves away from himself. Sometimes a girl makes no sense to him. At others times she does. Usually it is when he is hard. He thinks about the first girl. He thinks about how, “I fit here, in her, and she moves, then I move. This is love.”
- - -
Sometimes, when he becomes older, the boy moves away from a God. Sometimes a woman makes no sense. At other times, she does. Usually it is when he is inside her, expansive, yet, comfortable; expansive like the universe or even certain planets, comfortable like a human under a warm blanket. He thinks about this woman, the first he has ever loved. He thinks about how, “I form a universe, with her, with me. And she loves, then I love; and this is Creation.”