I accept pain as it is. It's not an enemy that I have to flee from or fight. It is just another emotion that comes and goes. I will allow myself to stop, to sit and to be aware of things as they are. I recognize that just as every thing that is pleasurable has the seed of darkness in it, every darkness has the seed of joy in it. I recognize that these days, I am more confused than clear and more in darkness than in light. But I recognize that this is not a permanent state, and that the light will come pouring through the gaps and through the cracks. I promise to be gentle with pain when it comes.

My Daily Notes

A feeling arises, from inside, like a scream in a hollow room. Something is burning, the roof has taken wing, the blankness of the dark is pouring in and mingling with the blankness inside, two rivers are merging. There is a roar. Is it of water or is it the ghost of the tears that were never shed or the insanely loud dripping of the blood from the parts of me that I have hacked away wildly and threw out into the dirt?

Dust to dust ashes to ashes, everything turns. But what about this hammering of the heart that clacks clacks inside of me as if millions and millions of locomotives are rushing, are converging radically to a single locus, that will soon explode into a mangle of flesh and steel. Insertion of steel into the skin, will that physical bleeding help to stem this tide of endless days within which I have to constanly fight to stand up? I have tried that. It's like adding a drop of water to a vast sea.

Why haven't I learnt anything from an older lesson, that this crazy paraniod world which hoards everything normal: making love, grief, joy, even mere companionship, has nothing to offer but meal after meal of bitter fruit? I soffocate, I need help, I don't know where to run, whom to turn to anymore. I am too far for anyone who can hold me and too close to those who held me but don't want to anymore. How the equations were recast endlessly. To what end, to obtain which elusive happiness?

The narcotic of work is too weak to keep the sea of pain at bay, it breaks all the feeble dikes I build to keep it from rushing in. So like a ship riddled with too many holes and whose pumps are dead, I can't pump out pain fast enough. It hardens into a thick sludge as soon as it enters. I am left gasping for air. I am left caged in this room like a true madman whose signals, S.O.S es sent in the language of grief, escape into the endless space. It is as if who I am calling out to someone is not human but is an extra terrestial or some remote god whose ears are filled with wax.

All I want to do is throw myself against and crash into all these walls that are pressing down upon me like a tank shell. That instant butchering is better that living with this animal gawning at my insides. Everything that is meaningful is disappearing, one bit at a time. Sometimes I feel imaginary teeth running over my bones.

And sometimes I feel like dying. That's all.

My Daily Notes

I raise the blinds over this square of glass, sunlight comes pouring through, on the other side is the outside, here it is dark, this is inside.

I remember those sad eyes that said, watch your eyes in my eyes in your eyes, reflecting and sending silences. Perhaps this was why I couldn't distinguish what was inside and what was outside.

The curtain fell, the play was finished, silently we erased the travel routes on old maps of memory, etched inside. This is just my solitude standing, at these windows, remembering you, you who are now outside,

Of me, Completely.

2002:09:04 20:00 Atlanta Written to songs of Dar Williams.

My Poems