If

If someone gave me the mountains
In all their grounded confidence
In all their bullheaded majesty
If someone handed me the key to the earth
I would stand at the precipice
In the hovering cold of winter
And scream at the moon
For my sky-scraping city

If someone took me to bed
With that unstitching tenderness
With those painless pushes
With those roving eyes
I would hold myself together
I would hide under the covers
Making a fort of warmth and fear
Wishing only to rest

And if someone opened their chest
That I might see what was caged within
If they pulled back the skin
And told me what was theirs is mine
I would bring out my torch
And venture into the ventricles
But I would not, could not
Open up my own the same

But in you come crashing
Staggeringly solid, ravishingly real
You are not my savior
And you do not ask me to save you
I watched you once with weariness
Twice I turned you away
Three times I let you slip past
But now you're here, and you say you'll stay

The cloud of your eyes
The bluegreygreen of mystification
Leads me into the heart of my city
Leads me to sleep soundly beside you
Leads me to open, slowly, slowly
And you are embodied scrutiny
And you are embodied certainty
And I think I'm falling in love with you

(If someone brought me anything
If someone took me anywhere
If someone opened a door
I'd wish for you on the other side)

For Jack Kerouac

Jack, it was the liquor that took you, and it was your gaze at me from the page of a book that made me believe it would take me too. If we, the creatives, the crooks, the crazies, are to live for our art and forsake all else, will we not then die for our art as well?
It was you who made me truly believe that madness and success come together in a package, wrapped in brown paper of chaos, with a shiny red bow of addiction to decorate. It was you who told me with your photographed face, with that sideways smile on that beautiful face, that it is possible, plausible, permissible, to write a book in three weeks with no revisions, hopped up on speed and mild diner coffee.

It was you who made me say I wanted to go into the mountains alone with no one and nothing to aid or protect me, and come face to face with God.

Jack it was you that urged me to take to the bottle, to fill up on whiskey before spilling my blood on the paper. It was you that whispered in my ear, "You can be great, you can be inspired, you can be a legend, if only you torture the passion out of you."

From you I learned never to rest in one place for too long. From you I learned to have no ties to my fellow humans. From you I learned that intoxication and belligerence lead to the highest art forms.

It is you I have been battling with, Jack, your beautiful mess I have run from, your artful insanity that has taken me to the edge.

I see your corpse at the bottom and wonder, Shall I jump?

What does it take to be a master of your craft?

It was the liquor that took you, and it may still take me. I live for this art; will I not die for it as well?

If You Must Know

If you are reading this, I’m going to assume that you are a human being. If you are a human being, then I know something about you that you may not even want to admit to yourself in the light of day. I know that you have wondered what it feels like to die.

This is the kind of trait that separates you from the other animals. Even the smart ones. Dolphins. Other primates. Your dog that you swear should be considered for personhood. You know that you are going to die. This is what gives you power. This is what gives you fear. This is what gives you drive and passion.

It will all be over soon enough.          

So you’re wondering, What does it feel like to walk through the valley of the shadow, and from what source does the light at the end of the tunnel shine? Where is God and why is he waiting? Will I be judged, will I see the beloved deceased, and will I kiss the ground or burn in a pit of sulfur?

It’s easy for me to answer these questions for you.

If you must know, dying is like the best kind of sex: Simple and pure, and without pretense. It starts slow, just a tingle in your flesh, working into your extremities, bringing light to the darkness in your cold fingertips, in the cavernous back of your throat, in the emptiness of your mind. At first, when you’re dying, you don’t know what’s going on. You feel…numb, not drugged, not thrown for a loop, but pleasantly anesthetized. You feel care for nothing, hope for nothing, desire for nothing.

            When you begin to die, for the first time in your life, you will know what it is to want for nothing.

            After the tingle begins the sting. Your soul is leaving your body. This can be painful. Everything in your flesh is objecting

            (the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak)

            and probably everyone in the room is objecting too. This doesn’t make it easy for your soul to take the flight that it was created to take.

            (We are all just born to die.)

            My personal situation was a common one. I was old and weak and good for nothing, dying of cancer in a hospital bed. My children were there, my grandchildren were there, my doctor was there, my nurses were there. They were all there when the machines roared to life in a flourish of beeps and whirs of catastrophe and impending doom, and all the while I heard the noises through the block of a coma and I was still completely and utterly at peace.

            If you must know, dying is like walking out of a really great yoga class or church service: Refreshing, but a bit of a slap in the face. You were so warm in there, and goddamnit it’s so cold out here, but the thing is that in that room nothing that you were feeling was real and out here everything is.

            If you must know, dying is like leaving a movie theater right when the movie is getting good: Never a feeling of resolution, always a perfect memory, in no way regret.

            When I died, and I felt my soul leave my body, I all of a sudden realized what I believe I had known all my life. C.S. Lewis was wrong about a lot of things but he was right about this: You do not have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.

            It’s not an easy thing to understand, when all you know is flesh, when all you know is hunger and thirst, when all you know is air and sunlight, when all you know is grime and sweat, when all you know is sex and desire. But when you die, you will understand. Your soul is everything, and none of this ever mattered.

            When I died, I walked away from the hospital in the best shape I had ever been in, and that was with no shape at all. I was without form and without weight and without breath or heartbeat, but I could feel everything like it was new, like I had just been born into the world and was seeing it with the shaded eyes of a newborn, feeling it with the twitching hands of a child. I walked out of the hospital, out the window, out through the street

            (with no need for a crosswalk)

            and up, up, up into the hills. I was wearing brown shoes and the clothes of my younger days when everything felt novel and fresh. There was a dusting of snow and my feet sunk and made prints in the mud on the hillside.

            So many of the changes that you see were not caused by the things of this world.

            I reached out my arms to the light, climbing the hill without feeling any signs of windedness, of wear and tear, of the smoke in my black lungs coming back to haunt me because I simply had no lungs, I had nothing at all. All I had were my arms that I reached out to the light, and the light drenched the hillside in gold and cast glitter on the snow, and I knew that this was the happiest moment I had ever experienced, just the effervescence of my soul

            (of all that I was and am still)

            and the ephemeral moment, the sun that would set and then rise again, the hill that would crumble one day after many souls had walked it, the world that I was leaving behind.

            If you must know, dying is like the change of seasons: It feels like you’ve done this before, yet something in the air is always new.

            When I reached the light that I thought was the sun, my eyes were blinded and my skin set aflame, and I had no thoughts, no memories, no hopes. There was no past, no future. There was only a moment, a long, long moment, where I didn’t know who I was, or where I was, but none of that mattered because there was no who or where but only here and now.

            On the other side of the light was beauty eternal, but if you must know, John Lennon was right and there is no heaven above you.

            If you’re reading this, you want to know, What is it like to be no more?

            When you get to the other side, I don’t know what you will see. But what I saw was a bus station in a grand, steamy sort of fog, and sitting on the bench at this bus station was a person, and this person was young and well dressed and just a dead soul just like me. I approached this person, and they said to me with the calmest demeanors, the kind of face that could weather a monsoon and not flinch, Are you a seeker of truth?

            I answered honestly and said that I had tried. All my life I had tried, and don’t we all, don’t you all, doesn’t everyone try for something? All my life I tried to understand the truth, search for the truth, speak the truth. I church-shopped and read too many books, pouring over the holy texts like I had been consecrated for it from birth, asking god where he was or where she was or where it was, and to whom am I speaking when I address this god?

            I answered honestly and said that I had tried.

            The traveler pointed to the other side of the bench, and there I saw what I had not seen before and what I did not then understand. It was a ball, a dense and tarry black, and it was floating in midair. Do you know what that is? the traveler asked me. And I shook my head, for I knew nothing.

            If you must know, dying is like going back to college as a senior citizen: You can’t see why not, but you can’t see why.

            That is the universe, the traveler said. That is the universe from whence you came. That is the universe that contains all of the murder, all of the rape, all of the fires and volcanoes and hurricanes, all of the hatred and domination and control, all of the abuse and wickedness and trials, all of the darkness and war and violence, all of the corruption and greed and malice, all of the lust and avarice and carelessness, everything that you have ever known and have known that you must hate. But. That is the universe that contains all of the love, all of the compassion, all of the generosity and kindness and gentleness, all of the joy and inner peace and harmony, all of the light and beauty and freedom, all of the art and creativity and inspiration, all of the passion and hope and friendship. That is the universe, the whole universe, in which everything seemed so big to you. And here it floats, in the midst of this.

            What is this? I asked.

            This is the Void, said the traveler.

            This is God.

            This is Jesus, Allah, Yahweh, Brahma, Krishna, Buddha, the Great Spirit, the All, the One, the Divine.

            This is Love.

            If you must know, dying is like waking up from a nightmare: There is abounding gratefulness, but you can’t stop dwelling on what just happened.

            I looked around at the fog, at the dusty grey that shrouded it all, and I looked down at myself, myself in my clothes, myself with my young soul-body, myself so filled and yet so empty, and then I felt it.

            I felt the love.

            Have you ever fallen in love? Have you ever had that feeling of total contentment while looking into someone’s eyes, like you would change nothing about them, nothing about this moment, like everything in the world is right, so long as they are there?

            If you must know, dying is a lot like that.

            I asked the traveler why it was that some people claimed they had seen heaven when they died, and came back to earth to tell the tale, the victims of a heart attack but the lucky ones revived by a shock to the chest. And the traveler said, In life on earth and all the lives after it, people only see what they are ready to see. You were ready to see the truth.

            The traveler said to me once, Never forget that all the pain in the world will never compare to the love that holds the universe.

            That is all I wanted to tell you.

            On the other side, there is a great adventure, and at all times, on all sides, throughout your journey, you will be enveloped by the greatest love of all.

            If you must know, dying is like a beautiful life: You never want it to end.

            And it won’t.

            Don’t worry.

            There is peace here.   

Stained Thoughts

If I’m awake, then my mind is dancing around you.

In circles, in squares, in ellipses. A waltz.

If I am dreaming, then I’m already with you.

So I’m stuck with you, our twin eyes scouting

separate planes,

but my thoughts stained with you

like the white table cloth with cranberry juice.

Guy Walks Into a Bar

Guy walks into a bar on Christmas Eve. No punch line awaits him, no drum badum-bum to the joke that is his life. Who goes to bars on Christmas Eve? Junkies and whores, the sick in the head, black in the lungs, dead in the liver. They've missed their last couple of AA meetings, the crazies in this bunch. They've missed the past multiple years of church services, the candle light of cathedrals never characterizing their Christmases. This is not a jovial bunch, not a "Merry Christmas" is heard in the place, unless the word "fucking" is used preceding the greeting or wrapped within it. There is no cheer to be found in this particular bar, this dive bar on this back street in this shitty part of this dark and quiet city on this holiest of nights, amen.

No, there isn't a smile to be found here.

Guy walks into a bar on Christmas Eve, musing about the celebration that is upon the world. So some baby was born in a barn. So he was supposed to save the world. So where is he now? thought our guy.

He ordered a shot of Captain and felt his spirit warm with its hot spice and tingle. Jesus, he thought. How does Jesus celebrate Christmas?

Guy walks into a bar on Christmas Eve, all right, and his whole life is in fucking shambles. His girlfriend of three years left him last week, emptying drawers of their contents and then filling them with bitter curses and tainted memories as she left. She broke all his liquor bottles open, pouring their contents down the drain, muttering and crying, the shattered glass scattering, running to escape her overwhelming sadness, her waterfall of hot tears. She broke all his liquor bottles like she wanted to break his bones, like he had broken her heart every day for nine months now. He was a broken man, a dead man walking with unseeing eyes and a careless, glib tongue, and an affinity for belligerence (but not every night, he justified). Ever since he had lost his job, ever since his girlfriend had miscarried, oh the world had ripped at the seams and the bottle had been his only comfort. It had all happened in one unlucky thirteen day period, and yes, ever since then, our guy at the bar on Christmas Eve had been a different man.

Guy walks into a bar on Christmas Eve, broken beneath his ribcage but not a crack on the surface, wondering, Didn't Jesus hang out with fuck ups like me?

Our guy was four shots deep and barely getting started at 8 pm on the Eve of the Blessed Birthday of our Lord. Somewhere across town, there was a family having dinner together, rosy faced from the egg nog, hearts full of good will, an entirely different kind of drunk.

The neon sign hanging over the bar's cavernous mouth flickered a little, flashing iridescent red on the pure, fresh snow.  

Guy walks into a bar on Christmas Eve, and this guy was once only a boy. He had a mother and a father, as so many of us do, and a heart full of dreams and deep desires. When he was five, he wanted to be a fire fighter. When he was eight, he wanted to be an astronaut. When he was eleven, he wanted to be a rock star.

Children do not understand the terms "unemployed" or "alcoholic," and none dream of becoming such.

But our guy had become the worst. No session on a mall Santa's lap, no prayer to the Christ, no Christmas dreaming, could have saved him from this fate. Jesus himself could not (or was it simply would not?) lift him from the bar stool and restore his wondrous, sober innocence.

Our guy was six shots deep and feeling a buzz in his fingertips at 8.42 pm on the Eve of the Day he once had Dreams of. Somewhere across town, a group of children were opening presents, flabbergasted by Santa's generosity, satisfied parents and grandparents looking on, dreaming of the upstanding adults these children would become.

The bar's neon sign drenched the snow in warmth. One letter on the far right flickered madly and then burned out.

Fast forward to 11.25 pm on the Eve of the Day that our guy now Damned and Dreaded. He could no longer remember how many shots deep he was. He stared at the wall of liquor bottles before him, the bartender, his hands. He marveled at his own weary existence in this funny, cruel world. He thought (or prayed), Jesus, where are you? Can you do me a favor and help me out of this mess? 

On the other side of the world, a mother screamed, murderously distraught, holding in her arms the now-soulless body of her starved child.

Even on Christmas Eve, the death toll goes on.

The red neon drenched the white pavement in a bloody low light. Flicker, flicker, and then the sign went black.

Fast forward to 1.14 am on the cold, dark morning of the Mass of Christ. Guy's body in bed, shallow breathing, stomach lurching, heart struggling. Vomit aspiration on Christmas is not a romantic way to give up your spirit, but our guy wasn't a romantic. He was a realist. And realists die faster.

Guy walks into a bar in the middle of a Christmas night. He is a wraith, a mist, a spirit, and he has stepped into the Other Side. Dead on Christmas. Too much to drink. He marvels at his still-weary existence in purgatory or hell or wherever he is (he can't figure it out). He sidles up to the bar and sits down next to a man, bearded and robed, dark in complexion, sympathetic in the eyes. A laugh plays at his lips like he knows the punch line to the joke, and he says to our guy, "Will you buy me a drink, buddy? It's my birthday."

A Story Full of Errors

Big favors and small talk
Loud car rides and one near-sleepless night
The room was full beyond our bodies' borders
I really wasn't expecting that

One dance in the beginning
One bottle of wine in the end
All I know is, I don't want an ending
Things remind me of you, but I don't need reminders

If ever there was a story full of errors, it's this one
Tripped up, sprawled out, face planted in what I didn't know you were
Taken aback by what I didn't think you could be
Smack dab in the middle of what could be a tragedy

So I waited too long
So I didn't see the train coming
So I forgot to expect that the best things are unexpected
So, what now?

So I'll admit I'm already crying
Even though we haven't laid the miles down
Between your place and mine
Real estate is all about location, location

So I'll admit that I give no shits
So I'll admit that I'd give up convenience
And good sense, and my better judgement
So I'll admit I'd choose you over anything now

No, really, you can laugh
You don't take anything seriously
And I wouldn't expect you to feel this gravity
But it's pulling me towards you

No matter where you are,
That's what matters now
And it sounds crazy, and my sorrys wouldn't mean shit
But I'm sorry for how much I'm not sorry
For how much I want you

Am I too late?

Read Me

Finding words was easy

We've been on the same page since moment one

We met in the center of the book

To avoid you was impossible

To feel a disconnect was impossible

To ignore you was impossible

We were made to sit on that bench that day

You stuck out like a dog eared page

On the warm first of September,

the light first of September

In the solitude of my summer,

the margins of my misery

Somehow you started a new chapter

You were unexpected

How long is the duration of this conversation?

It's been three weeks that have stretched like three years

You read me like a book

Speak my thoughts like script and poetry

Pick the important parts first

And my endless library feels finite with you inside

Hold carefully the spine of me

I'll reverently underline

The parts of you I want to remember

Until all of you is chosen

All of you is important

I feel I know you

Better than I do

There lies the danger

Throw caution to the wind as I come unbound

I won't keep secrets

I can't be anything but open for you

This open book to read

My hand over your hand

over a pen pressed to a blank page

We're in this together, somehow

Let's write this one together now

Bring Me

Bring me your judgements,
and I will harshly judge them.
Bring me your hatred,
and I will seamlessly match it.
Bring me flint and a knife,
I'll set fire to you.

Bring me your criticism,
and I will play the rebel.
Bring me your weakness,
and I will play Jezebel.
Bring me your script,
I'll write my name into it.

I can fake.
I can act.
I can play make believe.
I can protect.
I can guard.
I can retreat.

Bring me your heart,
I'll reciprocate.

Bring me you,
and I'll bring me too.

We're All Mad Here...

I.

                I followed the White Rabbit into a land of wonder…what is love if not a dream or an illusion? It is a world all its own, it’s a world I no longer know. I fell into it, certainly, but you can’t fall out of what you fell into. It was a long climb up, and though I wish to go back, there’s a wall behind me and a vast Wasteland before me. Wonderland never existed? Surely love cannot end that quickly…surely the rabbit hole can be found and tumbled down again.

                I followed the White Rabbit into a borrowed story book and stumbled away worse for the wear. Why did he run from me? What color was his waistcoat? What time did his watch read? I have forgotten the details of him, but I remember when I remembered, and I want nothing more than to remember again.

II.

                When the tea cup was half empty, in those days I would move down the table to a full cup again. Dissatisfaction suited me, even rewarded me, and when the love seemed to be running out, it was immediately replaced by more. “I like what I get” was quite exactly the same as “I get what I like”. I meant what I said at that table of riddles, and I said what I meant, and those were the same, and we were the same, and we didn’t need anything but to be the same.

                This is how I remember love being, but I have forgotten what it feels like, and my cup is empty.

III.

                It was no business of ours, yet we readily played croquet with the Queen of Hearts, and suffered for it later. Our smiles were disgustingly huge, and how were we to know that to trust the Heart was to lose our heads?

                I giddily went to my execution grounds, you know, thinking nothing of sacrificing logic to stay in love.

                Madly in love, yes, and crazy for love, we described ourselves as such so often, but did I realize that when I checked into that game, I relinquished my sanity? The game is over, the Queen chased me away, but my sanity has not yet returned. The cost of being in love, you know, is never knowing the real truth again.

IV.

                I bring before the court my evidence. I didn’t steal the tarts, your majesties. I didn’t steal his heart, your majesties. He gave it to me. But I lost it.

                “A lifetime of servitude to replace this heart,” the judge said, and his gavel came down three times on the stand.

                Servitude?

                Yes, of course.

                Servitude to madness…

V.

                We’re all mad here, you know.

                Without madness, there is no love.

                It’s maddening to know that your happiest madness is an unreachable spot on the timeline called “The Past.” It’s as if being a part of someone and having them be a part of you is merely a dream you’ve woken from, or a fairytale you once heard. You can hold your ground and say, It was real! We were just in love last week! But last week turns to last month and last month to last year, and then you begin to question your own memory…Did I really love him? Did he really love me? Did I ever know him? Does he even exist?

                We’re all mad here.

                I never stopped being mad for Wonderland. I never stopped being mad for that love. But it is too far behind me now. I can only make out its colors. The details of it disappear into the other details of it, its edges blurring slowly into the sky.

VI.

                Here I am, walking through fields of flowers. I see beauty where I once knew that it would speak to me. It just isn’t the same thing.

                In this place, the daisies look at me with withering exhaustion, uncaring and cold, as if to say, What do you expect us to say?

VII.

                I settle for memories when I have the heart to settle, and I recall that Tweedledum and Tweedledee told us cautionary tales. I remember that our curiosity was expected in those days, yet they told us to ward it away. Curiosity, they said, will devour you. They warned us of age, too, but we never feared it.

                Am I to lie to myself and say we never made a mistake? I never made so many mistakes as I did with you. I never hurt someone so many times. It wasn’t all beauty. It wasn’t all good. But it was Wonderful.

                I go back to Tweedledum and Tweedledee, now they click their tongues at my stubborn inquisitiveness. Suddenly I am wondering but never knowing, asking questions without real answers. Will I ever love again; will I ever know him again? The answer is a resounding NO, but I cover my ears to it and wish for new answers to the same old questions.

VIII.

                I don’t know the truth about anything anymore, you know.

                I can’t get back to Wonderland.

                I miss it.

                I miss you.

                I love what I remember you to be.

                I hate your shadow, still cast over my habits and words and thoughts.

                I don’t know what is real.

                I see only myself through the looking glass now, and I am terrified.