“Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. 
It is up to you to give [life] a meaning.”
- Jean-Paul Sartre

i found a picture of myself
singing with my friend's band

(who i would go on to play with
and dump tons of time
and effort
and money and soul
into
different poem)

i was smaller then
and your hair was probably green


sometimes i wonder if you saw me one day
at some horrible show
i wouldn't have stood out
i was smaller then

you would've been walking through ICC
probably already tired of being there
and there i would've been
some band shirt
too tight pants
goorin brothers hat

heavy sigh
damnitall things never change

but maybe i was there.  and so were you.

when i see a band i really love
the world stops
i don't know who or what is happening
all i can appreciate is how they play
the way they transition from song to song
spanning albums and career
and sometimes genre

i get lost
and i scream
even if the band doesn't
i holler the lyrics
and move in time in my own space
the crowd around me loses meaning
and i care not who i offend
with my joy

maybe i was there

maybe i was laughable

things never change
i still make that ass out of myself
and i still put myself in situations
where its going to happen

it is not the spectacle it used to be
and frequently i'm there alone
where in the heyday
there was always a crew along for the ride
but still i holler
and shift back and forth in my own little world

and you might see me there
one of these days
but it will be different
i won't be smaller
and i'll be me, not just that guy

that moment
will be just like the other time
except you will know
now what you didn't know then

and we will ride away when the show is done
that will be my favorite bike ride


in that picture i found
my shirt read
"I Am Miss America"

losing track of where i stand 

in most things 

stay weird i say

just stay

i haven't assessed this yet

29 

              twenty nine

                                           XXIX

what a fuck all of a year

and its not yet over yet

it still has its claws deep in my back

nestled in the small space

between my shoulder blades

weighing on my arms

and sending shocks down my spine

whenever it sees fit

the pulse has changed though

rather than skipping beats 

my heart soars and settles

with the fervent passion

of a post rock guitarist 

gone from strumming one chord

for 10 minutes

to alternate picking

some glorious delayed melody

deeper wounds have cauterized

than XXIX could hope to rain down

on my unsuspecting shoulders

my soul

resembles the landscape of a knife fighter

but my heart 

still it soars

stay weird i say

or

at least

just stay

sometimes people surprise you
like when you're crying at an episode of the office
and the first guy you'd call on
to back you up in a fist fight just
smiles, pats your knee, and says he loves you
by not saying anything

just chuckling

because its fucking ridiculous to cry
just because erin found her birth mother
and it was joan cusack
but i am fucking ridiculous
and that was perfect

i cannot feel so many things
that have permeated my mind for so very long
the sorrow of existing
the very weight of my being
seems now like a laughable thought

not that pain is not real
or rather
that the bad that hides behind every
interaction, moment, thought
is no longer there

yes

there is much sorrow in the world
and we all fuck up
tomorrow i will fail myself or someone i love
and tomorrow i will become a better now me

leland p. fitzgerald said
"maybe we're really scared of the good stuff"
and maybe it is inside of us
then we have the opportunity to be
good
all of the time

maybe a character is more real than person
maybe you have the chance to decide

what if there is no G-d?
and it really all sits deep inside you
the act of choosing
will define you long after you're gone

myself
i choose to run headlong at love
i choose to try and make a poem change the world
i choose to know, not believe
that this moment
is above all others
i choose to lay myself bare
on the altar of time, money, effort, sleep, comfort
if only to see about a girl
i choose to hope
and in that hope, for each of us
i choose to never measure the passage of time
and to never know myself by the loss
that time has brought

rather to sit quietly
and know that i am only now

and read the words of wiser men aloud to those i love

"i rapped about eggs recently
i want to write about legs
i want to change everything"

to do as donald miller advised
and stand quietly in the wilderness
reading sonnets to no one

"i'll tell you how the sun rose
a ribbon at a time..."