Recovery And Frank Sinatra

recovery and frank sinatra

snow on telephone wires and fifteen years of weathering this winter. i cannot believe i have made it to this day, a future in advance, waiting to see which way this life unfolds. 
an old phonograph scratches at the record’s ends, static over roof tops, sound waves breaking through crescents of white. a wave through foam and bursting colours. 
i keep asking the same questions over and over and i guess that’s what keeps me living, trying to find the answer. is that what Jean meant when he said, who am i? without and within. music, piano fading so i flip the record. 
frank sinatra and i have learned a lot together. we know what happens when you fall in love, when you fall out, in between. we go together, him and i 
through these telephones and microphones and static, empty nights. 
outside it’s cold, enough that the table shakes with it even, the house trembling in the wind. we are fragile but somehow still standing if that is a miracle. 
someone left the door open and now everything’s come in. i don’t try to stop it anymore and they sit quiet, listen to the record play while the snow falls. in this way we have learned to wear the days together and now fifteen years later i am still standing, frank sinatra in my hand, before i sit and listen until i fall asleep.

death is only the end if you assume the story is about you

in the pages of some published novel somewhere, you are the side character to someone else’s story. there is an entire world full of events you have absolutely nothing to do with and everything to do without. in this world you are present, but not a presence. you are unoccupied, a hollow body, someone else's bones. the remake of an old favourite story everyone's forgotten the words to. that old jingle from the car commercial nobody can quite remember? that's you. utterly unimportant and perpetually misremembered, playing in the background out of tune. right now your death may be tragic. it may also be the only part of the story about you. every murder mystery has to have a victim. every hero, an unrequited lover, a sidekick, the villain’s henchman, a best friend or stranger, the train conductor calling everything to a stop, the bartender, a woman crying on the sidewalk waiting for the bus, whoever came up with the story in the first place, the man that walks through the door at same time someone else is coming in and you only ever get a glimpse of their face-

and he told me that i was Apollo 13 on the very last day-

of the year where we cried over things that we meant to go wrong or go right, little lives that we played from paris to l.a. on an eastward bound plane or the train that you took across empty lands with open hands and a dream that we could be more than we are, our broken-down scarred beating hearts, bursting lungs and minds full up of hope and the stars we see in our arms, magic and mystery and innocent mischief; a rocket taking off in our eyes, a year bending into place like a piece of a puzzle you can’t quite see has escaped, something you didn’t know you were missing until you felt the edges line up, all systems go three two one pushing off of the ground to fly up away like he always said you could do he told me i was his only dream and the stars he had looked for he found in my heart with the love of a daughter a child of his own and he kissed me goodbye, set me off on my own through the dark into space, helmet clasped around my face like the mission he loved galaxies up above said shoot for the stars don’t forget who you are and when the clock strikes twelve tonight you’ll come home and it’ll be alright set down on the face of the moon, know you’re where you belong and the world turns anew in a year without you

he told me that i was Apollo 13 and that if i believed what i dreamed- right before he left i said i know who i am and that it was because of you; you taught me what i know (i know) and everywhere i roam, i’ll see you on the road

THE VERY LAST DAY :: o.m.

2016

chain of gold

love her for it, and in spite of it; for this she will love you. and of this, nameless in its entirety, something good will grow. do not doubt this. do not forget this. for anything, for everything, for this: love her love her love her.

one must imagine sisyphus happy

here is the way i will live the rest of my life: one day at a time.

on sundays i will brew an entire pot of tea and drink it while reading a book or an article or a newspaper, anything i can do to never stop loving that magic and strange poetry of reality.

on saturdays i will go grocery shopping, the real way, at bakeries and butcheries and fruit markets. and if i buy something exotic, something strange, it will be my own choice, visiting italian markets and east asian seafood shops or arabic spice dealers. no one could blame me.

on fridays i will cook something new each week, a recipe to try, made out of something simple or complex but always different so that life does not become a terrible monotony and instead the flavour of adventure sits lingering on my tongue.

thursdays i will devote entirely to my menagerie, and wednesdays for the house- to clean will be to rid myself of any common perceptions.

on tuesdays i will be kind. not to say that i am ungracious or abrasive on every other day, but that i will make an uncommon effort to lighten someone’s day. the world will not turn any differently for it, but there are things we do for stranger reasons than this.

on mondays i will write, letters to my past and future selves, poetry, philosophy, discourse on science and reports, bills and taxes and novels and i will write like the world is ending in my hands because in a way it is.

every day i will live like the world is ending and i will get up and i will repeat this over and over and over, living this life because it is my only and my last, accepting the absurdity to be happy in my own peculiar way and falling in love with this strange, incomprehensible impossible world somehow over each time, every day that i live it and all its possibilities again and again and again.

say hello to god for me if you find him in your patterns

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