true.love.poetry
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zukeylake's LiveJournal:
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| Thursday, March 19th, 2009 | | 5:20 pm |
My Favorite Weekend, Revisited
If you’re here, it means you are at least remotely invested in what I have to say.
Believe me when I tell you, then, that last year’s inaugural Rothbury Music & Arts Festival, held over the 4th of July weekend near Grand Rapids, Michigan, was the most satisfying four days of my life.
No need to take my word at face value, though. Click the banner below. Ponder this year’s lineup, including The Dead’s only summer performance on what might be their final tour ever, plus a raft of other legendary performers with many more yet to be announced. Browse and marvel at the pictures of the music and the atmosphere. Read up on their intriguing socio-environmental philosophy, and keep in mind that they managed to walk the walk their very first time around. Onstage, roots-reggae headliner Michael Franti proclaimed Rothbury to be the most beautiful festival site in North America and expressed his astonishment on seeing ZERO garbage on the ground anywhere, thanks to an army of dedicated volunteers (of which I was one). Pay special attention whenever you hear mention of Sherwood Forest, a hundred-acre living breathing interactive artistic installation in the middle of an old-growth pine grove. Don't be surprised if you find yourself amazed that something so unbelievably awesome can still happen in this country.
Tickets go on sale tomorrow, March 20. Take a chance. Buy a pair for yourself and a loved one. Pack a tent and a cooler and check your ego at the door. Get lost in the music.
I’ll see you in the woods.
| | Tuesday, November 11th, 2008 | | 7:29 am |
(for which you can blame Whitman)
It is not yet dawn, and silent. No leaves fall; none remain abranch,
with no wind to move them besides. Tranquility, thick with absolute stillness.
I am reminded of the delicate atmosphere that invariably arises in the midst
of our best conversations, a time when easy laughter and feigned anger alike
fade to something quieter, an unspoken acknowledgement not only of
our mutual enjoyment of the other’s company, but of something more,
something deeper, always artfully dodged, always pressed against the far
side of the barrier between transparent and obscure. It’s as if we dare not
let it escape for fear that it might overexert itself too quickly after so long in
cramped darkness, or worse, that open air would only corrode it over time.
Audible or not, the thing remains real. Our sacred hush lasts just long enough
to betray the raw hope behind our voices before it is broken by another peal
of laughter, fueled in part by the relief of knowing that the secret we keep
only from each other, yet too fragile for vocal affirmation, remains safe until
some other day.
| | 4:45 am |
Alone on the Roof
It’s a clear night, incredibly clear And a full autumn moon is out Throwing off the kind of moonlight that can Make a man’s mind feel as uncluttered as the sky, Awash with thoughts as distinct as stars. The kind of moonlight you can feel on your skin. The kind of moonlight you could write a poem by. I miss you, and I wish you were here – not so I could see you or touch you, but so you could see this moon And be touched by its light, enveloped by the night As I am. I wouldn’t even care if I remained Just so long as you could experience it. I realize this and am surprised. Is this what love means, I wonder? A moment later I blink and think, It’s as good a definition as any. You once asked me what we are To one another. I believe us to be Celestial bodies bound by the soul, locked Forever in a euphoric waltz across the horizon Where both dawn and twilight dwell unseen. Melodramatic? Maybe. But Does this unnerve you as much as the possibility That we might just be two people, Unbound, random and irresponsible, Struggling to locate and fumble through existence to The rhythm of our solitary hearts?
 | | Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 | | 5:09 pm |
| | Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 | | 4:03 pm |
Sunset - a song for Kris
I've been searching for a sunset
I've been searching for a starry sky
Scanning the horizon for a bonfire
To show me that my life is not a lie
Oh, let me know my life is not a lie
When I already knew this world was beautiful
I saw my best friend die from a self-inflicted wound
Bipolar meds and lots of liquid courage
On a Wednesday night with Hemingway
and nothing else to do
A shotgun bought at Wal-Mart, and
enough young blood to fill a dorm room
Ever since I've stayed up till the sunrise
Hoping that the morning light will bring him back to me
And every single day seems like a reprise
The lonely nights are darker than the sea
I lie in bed forever, then I dream I drown in Lake Temagami
I've seen people turn to Jesus
Or praise the Dalai Lama like he's more than just a man
Say what you want about your Buddha
He can't play guitar the way I can
I've been finding my salvation on my own, you know,
the best way I can
I've been searching for a sunset
I've been searching for that starry sky
Looking for a place to build a bonfire
To show you that my life is not a lie
Let me show you that my life is not a lie
I'll show you that my life is not a lie...
Kris Doychak 10.21.86-04.04.07
| | Saturday, February 23rd, 2008 | | 2:51 am |
| | Thursday, January 31st, 2008 | | 9:47 pm |
Burning in Heaven
I am a victim of a happy childhood. My father never stumbled home after Friday’s payday, breath stinking of booze and evil, five o’clock shadow as dark as the circles under his blood-shot eyes. My mother never forgot to take her medicine, never drowned the dog in the swimming pool out back as the neighbors peeped through blinds and wondered whether to call the police. My brother never ran away to join the army or marry his pregnant girlfriend. Instead, I was born on the white side of Brooklyn. My parents, it turned out, were very nice people, with college degrees, savings accounts, blue jeans. I was not afflicted with any life-threatening diseases or deformities. My clothes were always clean and neat. My hair was pleated just so. I ate the right amount of fruits and vegetables. Visits to the doctor came annually, where I was informed that I was in the fiftieth percentile for height and weight. And so, when the night was at its deepest, when the whole world was sleeping, I prayed for calamity. Fire, tsunami, genocide; I wanted to feel the drum of my heart beat against my ribcage. In second grade, we began to learn about the civil rights movement. While the peace marches were nice, the bus boycotts well organized, nothing could quite equal the injustice of the dogs, the water hoses, sending little black bodies sprawling across the streets of our textbook. Martin Luther King’s birthday neared as our teacher turned to the one black boy in our class, face overflowing with compassion. “Matthew—how does this make you feel?” I waited, breath caught somewhere between my throat and my stomach. Here, here was a casualty of war, a boy who had faced trials. Here was a boy who knew the gleaming, red eyes of adversity, who had stared trouble straight in the face and refused to yield. “I dunno.” I wanted to slap him back into consciousness, to holler in his ear until he told us of his misery. What an abject waste of blackness, a chance at martyrdom! This boy had faced the fire, and refused to show us his burns! That night, as other girls’ Barbies got pregnant and married Ken, mine escaped the Holocaust, a rogue Nazi on her arm and a bounce in her step.
- Aarian Marshall, grade 10
| | Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 | | 2:36 pm |
haiku à la albion
business-major me: an eight-semester quest to bring home the bacon all-nighter again running on green tea and hope sleep crouches, distant frat food is lacking i’d kill for a fruit salad or just one real egg guys grumble and churn damned microwave is broken how will we survive? ramen is my balm noodles soothe a troubled soul college ain’t that bad | | Sunday, January 6th, 2008 | | 1:38 am |
entendre
When all else has abandoned you,
hold this knowledge close and draw whatever warmth from it you can: no one will ever make me as miserable as you.
| | Friday, January 4th, 2008 | | 6:23 am |
| | Monday, November 26th, 2007 | | 5:14 pm |
From a Gas Station Outside of Providence
This kiss, unfinished, lips to receiver in the parking lot,
a pucker shot through a fiber optic wire
to an answering machine
toward switchboards and stations transmitting
in blips to satellites, this kiss
thrown earthward and shooting down
coils, around pipeline and electric power
lumbering underground,
up threads and transistors
and transference points.
This kiss is zeroes and ones jumbled
and tossed into a pneumatic system,
unscrambled at the end and scrawled
onto a tape recorder slowly rolling
at the side of your bed,
then slapping back, reverbed
off the ringer, a tinny phantom
of the smooch like a smack on
an aluminum can, up the same
veins through the belly of the same satellite
and softly to the side of my head;
this kiss is home before the next exhalation leaves.
I'm stooped in the booth,
pounding quarters into the slot;
yellow light droops over the asphalt,
and your ghost, too cool
and elusive with those hands and mouth
sings around me in the smell of gasoline;
whose mouth is this, scratched in static,
some droplet of a sigh, atomized,
and sputtering digitized into my room?
- Mike Doughty
| | Thursday, November 15th, 2007 | | 2:42 am |
Dido's Fire
Love is not a noble thing. It is a desperate wrenching of resolve, a wretched stubbornness, a tortured persistence, rejecting every scrap of uncommon sense you’ve ever earned and throwing yourself upon the mercy of the most distant glimmer of hope, a star invisible to even the most accomplished of crickets. Love is a miserable slog, a dirge sounded by the simple string quartet that huddled behind Jericho’s walls, ignoring the strident trumpet blasts outside, refusing to budge for anything less than the pure and sublime. Love is the act of impaling your heart on a sundial surrounded by roses, pretzeled ventricles leaping into your throat before drowning in the pit of your stomach with every sacred confession and anticipated response – truthful or not? Honesty floating through open air, or hidden in plain sight behind a pane of bulletproof glass? It is doubt, endless doubt, like an oil slick stretching to the horizon under a bleak sky, bottomless; It is ultimate vulnerability, endless late-night fetal shivering and voluntary solitude, where foolish confidence and square-jawed arrogance are tools of self-preservation;
It is suffering for the sake of unfathomable beauty. Love is a mess, but it is the total agony that lets the lover know he is alive. | | Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007 | | 3:08 am |
Beacon
Sometimes I wonder how much easier life would be
if I had a scrolling neon sign embedded in my chest that would tell all who looked upon it exactly what I wanted from them. Pleasantries and strained politeness waste time and send mixed signals, in my opinion, serving no purpose other than to absorb the shock of reality and to provide one with the opportunity to confuse one’s message. The tongue is feeble, as can be the mind that guides it; only the heart is pure and dependable. Give me the raw pounce of “WHAT YOU PROMISED,” the shy desperation of “TO KNOW YOU BETTER, NOTHING MORE,” the silent roar of “TRUE LOVE” emblazoned in scarlet letters across my breast, and let no one
doubt my feelings or question my intention again.
| | Monday, July 30th, 2007 | | 11:41 pm |
The Cynic’s Lullaby
- or - Everything I Ever Needed to Know About Life I Learned From My
Manic-Depressive Middle School Art Teacher
If you love something, fling it from you. If it plummets to its graphic and untimely destruction, rejoice For if it dares break your heart so, by cruelly robbing you of its existence, It obviously wasn’t worthy of your love. If it returns, flee with all deliberate speed For it is clearly desperate, and you deserve better.
| | 3:38 pm |
| | Monday, June 25th, 2007 | | 5:45 pm |
Love me openly,
Bravely, boldly, Surrender your heart to the joy that might be Kiss me softly, Sweetly, slowly, Hold my hand firmly, be proud that I’m me Write of me coyly In phrases unfettered, But never dare doubt that my feelings aren’t true And don’t fear to dream Of a romance elusive For nightly I thank the good Lord that you’re you.
| | Tuesday, April 24th, 2007 | | 5:14 pm |
(pre)tension
We fit together so well, facing the same way, my wrists
around your waist, you grasping my forearms as though I’m keeping you from drowning, every inch from your neck to your ankles pressed tightly against me without room in between for the smallest sigh to escape. I can’t see, but I know your eyes are closed. A silent smile is born from
nowhere, and you don’t even notice for a number of seconds
that feel like hours of tranquil bliss. When you do, you make
no effort to suppress it and only squeeze me more tightly, the only one you’ve found capable of provoking such an
involuntary happiness. Afterward, when I’m gone and the room is silent, you regret smiling, feeling guilty for giving
your heart the chance to act on its own. You kick yourself,
anticipating the pain that will surely come with the sight of my arms symbolically wrapped around another woman’s more perfect finger. I fear that your fear of the future is great enough to deaden the warmth of many such moments in our past, and worse, to vanquish any hope for the potential of the present.
I’ve allowed myself to believe that what we have is real.
Why haven’t you?
| | Thursday, February 15th, 2007 | | 2:39 am |
| | Monday, January 8th, 2007 | | 11:08 pm |
Cherish
All I want is to feel your touch one more time – the warmth
of your skin against mine, both your hands cradling my face as
we stand, your endearing hesitance to apply any pressure, our eyes locked for what feels like hours, your fingertips finally
finding the courage to explore the peaks and hollows of my
cheekbones… You search for words and falter, your gaze
diving to the concrete beneath our feet in embarrassment. I
slip my hand beneath your chin, where silken throat meets
sturdy jaw, and I tilt your head up with a smile, attempting to soothe your pained silence. I see pleading confusion in your stare. Ah,
my porcelain angel, you’ll find no answers in my face; whatever
it is, its description is beyond either one of us. This is not
wisdom; deeply though we try to dig, we cannot even
begin to fathom how entwined our lives have become. You shake your head in feigned frustration, but ultimately
abandon thought altogether in favor of a final embrace,
smoldering in the brisk evening streetlamp glow.
Sometimes, love, there are no words, and only touch can
convey what we so terribly need to express.
| | Thursday, January 4th, 2007 | | 2:15 am |
Your eyes mustn't glow like mine...
Here on a summer night
In the grass and the lilacs’ smell Drunk on the crickets and the starry sky Oh, what fine stories we could tell With this moonlight to tell them by A summer night, and you, and paradise So lovely and so filled with grace Above your head, the universe has hung its lights And I reach out my hand and touch your face I believe in impulse, in all that is green In the foolish vision that comes out true I believe that all that is essential is unseen And for this lifetime, I believe in you. All of the lovers and the love they made – Nothing that was between them was a mistake. All that we did for love’s sake was not wasted And will never fade. O love that shines from every star Love, reflected in the silver moon It is not here, but it is not far, Not yet, but it will be here soon.
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