I came to the end of the spool. What I began was a tapestry. A movement of straw and wind and hair and light and breath and veins. There were black birds against a white sky and pieces of blue stone scattered against the tarmac. This was a story I was telling backwards. The pillow fabric is the texture of the Sahara. The floor of the room as cluttered as the Amazon. We were all laboring under the heavy lashes of a curse, trying to keep our eyes open. Everything has already been done. There are babies everywhere, and pretty girls with perfect legs sipping coffee on wooden chairs. There are boys who look like men with aggressive hair and watery eyes. There are wild-eyed cats who think they are dogs, and sad-eyed dogs who think they are tragic heroes. There are poets who still poem, and flags still screaming in the wind. There are masks to wear. There are choruses to sing. There is a time line counting down to its own end. It swears it will repeat itself if the story doesn’t take the necessary turns, it threatens to pull over and stretch us along its tired length if we don’t stop crossing invisible boundaries. We, on this shrinking stone, trace the lines that keep us tied to what is real. These lines would translate us into ourselves if we were only far enough away to see the shapes they make.

Talkin bout my generation...

What they gave you was a lot of praise
and words like potential and brilliant.
What they wanted was a mighty work,
a timeless life, a transcendence.
What they'll take is a translatable success.

The thing is, they never taught you
words like realized, actualized, or sweat.

In the end, it isn't that the 60's failed
or that the need of all the once-hippies
will run-dry the well of Social Security,
but that, they gave you the world
and it was beautiful and dangerous and fragile,

and all the splinters of glass as it shatters
will look like rain, or ice, or snow,

and you'll watch from your parent's basement
And wonder with great concern and slight shock,
unsure of the words regret or failure or responsibility,
who's going to shovel the driveway?

How It Was in the Dark

When the soap that melts your skin no longer cleans

And the sleep that fills your veins no longer reaches your mind

It’s like climbing the impossible mountain

to speak to the man who sits there always

and upon arrival, finding him in bed, unable to move.

He looks past you to a coming storm and says:

I am more or less upset with the sun

for arriving too early and leaving too late.