here in winter

you can feel the sleep
you can smell the sleep
you can taste the cold
slowly soaking through the bindings that attach you to the fold

and the evening inhaling warmth from the land
and from the trees that once bore fruit
 and from anything that dares remain in her blue, blue, dusty room

on the horizon where green boughs once drooped with the weight of an eggplant dusk
now stand stark stick figure bark-encrusted markers of the past and future
and even with numbed face and fingers
you can feel a stirring only waiting
sense the sleeping bulb wrapped in a soil fist of inbetween
curled up tight in the dark and dreaming in the deep
one day to breathe again
soon to rise up from sleep 

–

it is very important for an artist to keep an unflinching eye on her or his weaknesses
and failings
even when not spoken aloud and
not to dwell
not to reserve a place in hell
(after all, we are all imperfect and ugly in the wrong or right light)
but if a person in general is always in danger of rationalizing or overlooking their own faults
then an artist is especially endowed to create an alternate world in which to live
and so he or she must be careful to mind the boundary line

important for an artist to keep an unflinching eye on weaknesses
to learn the lessons that would make a soul grow
to see the truths that must populate the work if it is to be “art” 
that is—
if you are to be saying anything important or worthwhile
it should not be in the service only of propping up the stories we tell ourselves to survive and stay “sane”

if it is to be more than just escape (though there is a valid argument for escape being all the justification “art” might need) your work must be in the service of revealing, speaking one of a few things (or perhaps some/all of them):

injustice being aided or carried out

horrors being perpetrated, overlooked

beauty to be absorbed

pitfalls to beware

ethereal ideas deserving flesh/important abstraction given form

ideas/essence/people that ought be kept alive/remembered

truth

and how can you tell the truth if you cannot look at it? how can you understand human frailty and then, evil, and finally the forgiveness and the redemption that pulses at the inner sanctum of every cell if you are imagining you are made of entirely benign molecules and motion? how can you see the eternal if you cannot squarely look at the now?

watch your fangs and mind your elbows
nursing all night on summerplump vine tomatoes
and careful not to spill too much gasoline in the stream
lighting fires for your sparkling (day)dream 

there is a garden you must tend
always and in every season
even if it is in secret
or for a time hidden by snow

- Clean house.

- Break down futon couch, arrange for pickup of wood, fold up futon.

- Gather up E’s pillows, arrange for UPS pickup.

- Clean out bathroom, gather C’s stuff for her.

- Rearrange bedroom completely, bag and box C’s stuff for her.

- Breakdown studio room completely, clean walls, rug, desktops.

- Move studio setup into bedroom.

- Set up old studio room for storage of items no longer in use as well as guest room for Luna.

- Throw away dead plants on living room shelf.

- Take wedding photos off living room shelf.

The last time I visited, he was being barked at by one of the guards, who was pointing the way toward a cell behind the man. 

“Get in.” 

“But I wanted to—”

“Get back in the cage.”

“But, the flowers—”

“GET IN THE HOLE.”

The man finally backed up, haltingly. Every step looked as if it were made with his bare feet moving over a heap of broken glass. He peered over his shoulder with dread. But still he backed up. He had to. The guard was a mass that moved with complete confidence, and as he did, he extended a dark, ridged baton toward the man, a ruby electrode only inches from his sweating forehead. It was not in doubt what would happen if he were to press the trigger. Well, perhaps there was a little doubt. 

The man finally crossed the threshold of the cell, and the moment he did, the door was swung shut. It was a dirt-caked, rusted but solid steel grate of a door. It fit into the wall roughly, but once it was shut and the key turned, not even an earthquake could open it again.

The walls of the cell were dark with soil and shadow. Unlike the conventional prisons, this place was hideously dark, uneven, unfinished, organic, and cluttered. It was what an attic would be, were you to put it in the basement.

The cells were not of uniform size, they were not clean, they were not well-lit. They resembled cavities in a giant tooth, or perhaps the rooms ants whittle out of the earth. They held impenetrable shadows. In these rooms you did not just blanch from the lack of light, you forgot what sun felt like upon the skin. You began to be able to sense minute shifts of air and temperature, and often felt cold. As the dark pressed down upon your staring eyes, you still sought to see, to see anything at all. The outside world first bloomed feverishly in the mind, along with color and abundant sound. And then, after a while (you lose track of time) it fades. The world, the world you knew possible and which was once all that was real, grows further and further away.

In its place grows imagination…new ritual. Games, distractions, indulgences. You grow a garden in the dark.

Or so that’s what he told me. I’m a confessor, not a prisoner. And he and I are almost done. This is what I think to myself as I watch him today. He and I are almost done.

ii.

The next day I visit, it’s a Monday. Not that this matters to him, or to anyone in the Honeycomb. “Monday” is for people with schoolbooks or time clocks or fee rates or lunch dates. Not for denizens of the colorless dark. Not for the Prisoners.

But it’s a Monday in my world, a world of hot cement, of white skies, of photodegradable potato chip bags. And when I finally make my way to his cell block and my eyes have adjusted to the dark, I see that he is involved in another confrontation with another guard. He is, again, across the threshold of the door. I know that some reading this document may not know what the Honeycomb is all about, and I’d love to explain the particulars of this utterly effective and horrific prison, but there’s no time. I have to take notes on what is happening here, because I fear they will be needed before long.

The man is holding his arm out, as if to keep the guard at bay. Amazingly, the guard is not swatting him with his baton, or firing electricity into him. The faceless and heavily-armed keeper just stands, looming. I don’t imagine he’ll wait much longer. 

The man sounds a bit more insistent, though floating in and out of enchantment as Prisoners tend to do.

“I want to go outside.”

“Yeah? So what?” says the guard. “Get in the cage.”

“But…”

“Get in the cage.” 

“I had flowers. I touched them. I saw…” the man’s voice faded.

The guard’s sneer, even in the dusty half-light, was quite visible. 

“Flowers. You killed the flowers. That’s what you did, you lowlife.”

The man seemed to shrink a little at that.

“I didn’t mean to….I was trying, I thought, I tried to—”

“Who cares what you meant, Prisoner?” The guard thrust the baton into the man’s throat for a quick second and he doubled over, gagging. The guard did not move, only looked down at the man’s contortions without emotion. If anything, his lip curled only harder. “Get in the fucking hole. You don’t deserve to even dream of flowers.”

“But,” the man sputtered into the coal-dust blackness all around as he tried to stand. “I don’t want to be here anymore. I’m ready. I can do it, I can grow someth—”

The guard swung his baton quicker than a syllable can fly between teeth, and a sharp cracking sounded as it crashed into the man’s face. He staggered back and fluid flowed from his nose and mouth, black in the dimness. His hands reached behind him frantically, and yet careful enough to keep him from falling back into the cell. The man spoke through the torrent. He sounded stronger, despite the lisping, mushy effect of talking through split lips and blood.

“I’m not staying here anymore.”

“Oh?” asked the guard with all the sarcasm he could muster.  ”So you want to be free, Flora Destroyer?” 

It was the highest charge in the land, and the man flinched when he heard it. 

“That’s not true. I’m leaving. I can’t breath here.” The blood was still pouring over his chin, though clots had formed along the edges of its path. ”You can’t keep me here,” the man added defiantly.

The guard did not advance, only put his weapon away, sighing. 

Without a word, he slowly withdrew another weapon. It was the baton he had brandished the other day. The glossy black one with cruel ridges and gemstone electrodes. He held it up. 

“Well, sure. But you know the rules, Prisoner.”

The man stood up fully and walked half a step closer to the guard. 

“Yes, I know the rules,” he said, closing his eyes. “And I am not a Prisoner. I am a Gardener.”

The man smiled in the darkness.

The guard pulled the trigger.

iii.

I wasn’t climbing down the hole at the Honeycomb for another three weeks. A process is initiated when a case is closed. It takes three weeks to be completed.

I was to see a new person today. It was a woman this time. No matter. I see them all, hear from all of them. The stories are only variations of each other, no matter the sex, age, class, or race. These things are washed away if you take the light away long enough, anyway. 

Her voice sounded like all their voices do at the start. Broken. Quiet. Thin. Her thoughts were in the shape of all new admissions. They circled back to one spot, and you could only watch as they each transformed to mimic the shape of the last cramped path.

I found my mind wandering as she began and had to pull myself back into the moment. I couldn’t help thinking about him.

“Are you listening?”

“Yes. I am always listening.” 

“It’s better this way, isn’t it?”

“That is not for me to say.”

“I should be here. I deserve to be here.”

“Perhaps.” 

“It’s because of me the flowers are dead.”

“Yes,” I said, letting her declare her own guilt as is the tradition. The gravity of the silence that followed felt unbearable, today. I found myself adding words I hadn’t expected. “I hear a new crop was planted last week.”

“Good,” she said with feeling. “…as long as I’m nowhere near them.”

This was how it would go. Maybe until she stopped talking at all. That’s how it usually ends.

Usually.

I said nothing more, only listened to her. That’s what I do. That’s why I’m there.

whys it always gotta be with demand?

whys it always gotta be with condemnation?

whys it always gotta be 

with a weary, sad plea?

whys it never good energy coming here to meet me?

whys it never an addition?

what’s the root of this condition?

por favor

subtract this glass fact from the shattered ledger on the rack

give me back the time and energy

and sustenance

i lack

when i am cut off from the everchanging seasons, i suffer
my blood thickens like mud
my mind begins to clutter, thoughts falling away like flies dropping from a carcass into the rank mud 
my vision circles back and fades early

but when reconnected to the bright sky
to the undammed streams
and the wind
and the soil
and the sand
and the heat
and the shadow
and the light

i am limitless

i tried to remind him not to escalate
but he was oddly unable to hear me
i told him he was making a choice to lose control
and he snapped back
i am NOT making a choice
so i realized that there wasn’t any point in my reminders
finally
he lost it. clutched at his own head.
“I don’t know what to do! Someone needs to do something!”

it wasn’t at that moment but shortly after that she exploded next to him.
she told him to PULL THE FUCKING CAR OVER NOOOOOOW
and it did feel maternal, but probably not in the way he may have hoped
he visibly shrunk under that heat
the last time i looked over at him he was about a foot tall and stooped over with his head hung down
saying (calmly again)
Don’t yell at me. Please don’t yell at me.
but that only made her more furious
THIS WAS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY
and you could see her disgust
disgusted that he could not get them to the airport on time
but mostly that he would become so shamelessly and utterly helpless and miserable and unable to right himself

what i learned long ago was that women don’t mind if you are helpless sometimes.
we all respond to certain things, and we all enjoy the interplay, if done right
she can rescue you or heal you or give you hope when you have none
and everyone’s happy
but…don’t be helpless in a moment she is specifically depending on you to come through
that, my poor man—
not so sexy.

2am Violets, originally uploaded by nezua.

what has the internet done to my writing. once i wrote in spiral notebooks. the letters spoke of the day and the mood with the density of the ink or the height of the letters or the uppercase slant or the drawings i’d sketch.

sit, quiet, writing. open the window, sip the tea. write.

a time to note the time, to speak the truth, to ask questions…and then close the cover and leave the marks there, pressed in dust, smells of paper and ink and inbetweens and
waiting notwaiting
       (to be)
                 o p e n
                            ed
        again.

it was a private thing. it was an unselfconscious and beautiful thing. thoughts had room to become naked. or to explode entirely, to snow down like dust or black bullets of coal being loosed from a heaving orange sky—words
did
not
exist to be pawed over
pecked over
parsed and pried apart and pornographically paraded exclaimed upon loved and hated by so many all so quickly and so didnt lean and upright gleam and yearn and whine and boast and keen

they simply were

there. withyou

in a sense
we’ve gained the worst of two worlds
in our joining of diaries and public periodicals

[if blogging has replaced a private journal]

we’ve lost the freedom of private writing
and gained an illusion of truthful documentation

and what will i have in ten years of these words?

these posts are not truth. they are not even true. they are conversation. they are angles of me i’m presenting to you they are honest quite often and yet fully dressed before they are born blue

which is fine sometimes. i don’t hate it or wish it dead or gone.

but i miss that cat who came out for spiral notebooks. that person who let out his gut. who did not even need to breathe deep to relieve because there was no one to impress, convince seduce deceive

i’ll have to go and rouse him
i need to know what he knows

i lied in the dark tonight under my fan
i seemed to grow wider awake
the night was as if a giant flower above me
hanging over me breathing into me
and i wanted never to sleep again

only to be in this infinite three am space
hot lemon tea on my tongue
a world falling further away
the sun turning under me
and a clock moving backward
soon to chime a number
that will tomorrow
no longer exist

it makes me mad! and a little sad. to see someone pick up a keyboard like a bat and smash the sense out of a word. it’s like that habit of saying “rather unique” or “virtually unique” or “quite unique.” YOU ARE SUCKING THE POWER OUT OF A WORD THAT WAS CONSTRUCTED TO NEED NO MODIFIER!!! that’s how much power the inventor of that word gave it! it stands alone and in standing alone banishes the NEEEEEED for a modifier because there is NO doubt and NO comparison and if an item is MINT that means it is mint condition. just jam that word down one time and that says it all! we get it. the item is in the same condition it was in when minted; made, created, stamped out, poured and dried and burnished and polished and packaged and sold. MINT does not mean “cool” or “wow” or CHECK IT OUT! 

ah well. I waste time getting annoyed at vendors when i should actually be paying them to give me some coffee. which, of course, i prefer *FRESH* *FRESH* *FRESH*

[ps, testing for trackbacks by linking here.]

i often get the sensation that i want to tear down every word i put online, or every word i have ever put online. do you ever wish you could go back to the days when there wasn’t one word written by you on the internets and avoid putting any up here? do you remember the first time you realized there were words of yours that were beyond your control to rescind? i do. it was disturbing. i didn’t know that the page in question would fade. six months seemed like forever back then, online-wise. but even that warning wasn’t enough. still i persisted. writing, writing, writing.

now there are pages. pages upon pages upon pages. and for what? they stand as ghosts, it seems. a forest of former selves.