Laughing Over the Sea

Under Heaven

2012-01-24T23:56:00.001-05:00

Happy am I, for I decay.
A mist like lace turns gray
without light, in a river crevice
where time kissed sand wet.

My knuckle cracks and the little
clot of blood is a sunspot, a missal.
My teeth wear flat. My hands pray.
Happy am I, for I decay.

Quetza

2011-12-10T13:57:00.001-05:00

We were heading toward winter, the sun was passing.
You told jokes in clear sounds. You talk in your room.
You said, Let me tell you something funny
about people using each other but
we knew the snow was coming, and you
would all drive like mad priestesses, and the fire
of summer was behind us. In the fourth season,
the cement would be covered in ice,
and the graveyard would be dangerous. Even
the stones might split, and all the words break,
unless, like the old, white, washed off ones,
they are already broken.

And all our friends gave up trying to command.
And all our friends sat down drinking, spinning cards.
I watched you crying just over your eyelids with your cheeks red,
when no one else saw you take diamonds from the dealer. Even you,
little in your grip, wished maybe hands could choose
just the right thing for you, tellingly; for everyone at once.
You left half of the whiskey in your glass, and at ten
you fell backwards, hugging yourself.

But I was angry, and sober, and the sun was passing.
I went down into the basement, where we found
the mouse that morning trapped underneath
the glass jar, twitching. Tl tli li
While you and all the rest cried yourselves to sleep
I said, if we can't find transcendence, I'll build it.

Driving back, where the traffic is trapped
by construction for widening the road,
and all the red lights looked like a serpent
sliding through a plastic tube,
I watched the moon.
It was cool, and silver, slithering higher
than the glowing contrails of jets, a coin
minted in the same shape as the world
dropping down the slot of a game machine.

So I worked in the damp. I worked
in the moldy chair, where water seeps
up from the ground, and the dryer
spins warm lint like wool; and I
had tears in my eyes too, but it wasn't
just from cold and I had my mind.
The sun was passing,
and somehow I knew I wasn't dying,
because even though I was dying,
and the sweat on my back, and the hair,
were sticky with fuzz and cruel words,
I remembered what you yelled at me,
I could have died happy! but then
you fell asleep in bed, and woke again
like a fit of epilepsy, and didn't say anything.

Taking pages and pages of books, cut
with scissors, and sheets of plastic, and paint
sticks, and fluorescent tape, and calendars;
taking tights, and some small pieces of unfolded
clothing, pasting them with flour and gluing it all over
with fragments of glass, I held it up to the light.
Whiskey is like lightning, and drinking it,
you breathe fire, but it tires you out. You are
only a dragon for a day, or an hour.
Words and words that had never seen each other
stuck together, flapping. My eyes ran
with the brightness, it was all like floating feathers,
and a thousand gazes, s(eeing, for once, )elfish,
so I wrapped it around me like a blanket,
walked down the front steps, past you passed out
on the couch, and followed the lines on the road.
I walked under the lamps. The light touched me.

You were asleep, twitching. I watched your eyes
roll, your hand signing wishes. Standing over
the silver rims of all the empty glasses, and
the flush and glow of cheeks thin with blood,
the sun was passing, and it was past.
I laughed softly, and laid my new coat down
to keep you warm. Finally, you laughed.

Spoken Word

2011-12-06T00:23:00.001-05:00

Read aloud:

Seed by Carl Nellis on Grooveshark
--
Seed

I always thought a farm of God would spring from soil bright with mica.
That any book he wrote would be sung like Psalms and read like Ezra.

But I'm like a patch of lichen hanging on the side of a dry rock
or a book with a broken binding waiting to be found and rebound.
One of those dead men that speak to me said 'the sky is made for rain'
so I'm here waiting, looking forward to a fertile valley and a field of grain.

Because, yes, I have this feeling floating through me like a cloud,
that I'll ripen or be plowed, that words in ink will still be true aloud;
that I won't rot, I won't wither, the sun won't scorch, the sounds won't die.
So I trust, and I have trusted. I will trust, though there's no water in the sky.

Is it pride that makes me wonder why my stunted arms aren't soaring branches?
Or why my dusty thoughts fall out in crackling prose and clumsy stanzas?
See, I've heard a lot of promises and some of them are written here,
but I myself can't see them, hanging in the wind and waiting, year to year.

And, yes, I have this feeling that crawled in and never left
that I'll ripen in good season, someone will read the pages in my chest.
I won't rot, I'm not an empty tome, the indifferent breeze won't dry me out.
No, I trust that he's a still small voice but sometimes I just wish that he would shout.

That the sky would blacken and all the air would fill, become a flood,
and all the rocks and hills and all the oceans waters would be turned to mud.
That every little prophet in the room would rise and shout his name,
that all the earth would drown in fire and water, and I would do the same.

Why isn't there some miracle for me? Or for the wider world?
Why promises, why writings, why the self, the soul with the edges curled?
My cover shut, the pages yellow, still, there is some ink along my spine,
and sometimes drops from distant rain come trickling down and ask.
Ask my tongue to grow a vine.

Flood Waters

2011-11-23T05:21:00.001-05:00

Higher than the mountain and deeper than the sea...

We started out hugging and smiling and full from dinner and that car nearly slammed into us right at the beginning, before we were even on the highway. The street was still dry. It's the first time my tires screamed like that. We both thought we were going to smash right through the driver's side.

Somehow, smoothly, emphatically, gently, in middle of the turn and at full speed, we stopped. They stopped. We weren't four inches apart. Our headlights glowed into each other. I waited one heart beat, pressed the pedal down, and we moved off. I laughed. Katie sighed. Not four inches.

...From the breadth of the east unto the west...

...Somewhere in between forever and this passing day

there's a place where moth and rust cannot lay waste...

She shook the bottle to mix thirty-six ounces of cold, instant coffee. I kept my eyes on the flooded road while she drank.

'It's actually not that bad'.

She was wrong. It tasted metallic, plastic, acidic and muddy. I swallowed as much as I could, probably more than half.

'No, that's bad.'

She laughed.

'I must not drink enough coffee or something.'

'Well, it will get us home. But, I mean, yuck.'

She laughed again.

...This is grace, the face of love.

...Stronger than the wildest horses and the rising tide

the chords of death hung so heavy round our necks...

A double-rig semi was towering over our right side when we hit the water at seventy miles an hour. Both vehicles slid. The wheel didn't control the car. A sheet of spray leapt up from the truck's tires and covered the windshield, the windows, everything. We were totally covered, totally blind, and out of control. The lights of the traffic diffused into an orange canopy while we swam forward. I didn't dare touch the brakes; just stayed still, completely still. Side to side. Blind. Forward. Blind. Gold. Red. Water and then, in an instant, air.

And we passed through.

Flood waters rise, but they won't wash away

Love never dies, it will hold on...

I turned off the music and held the phone to my ear.

Dad answered just as Mom pulled open the passenger door with the rain splashing her shoulders, hair and glasses. She was already talking, reaching in, laughing.

'Oh, never mind, mom's up. You guys are up.'

'Yeah!'

'I'll see you in a minute.' I could barely hear him over Mom. 'We'll just come inside.'

'Yeah.'

'Love you.'

'You too.'

'See you.'

I pulled the key.

The lights turned off and I sat in the driver's seat for a minute, wide awake. Mom ran back in the house. Rain ran from the garage onto my hood. I grabbed my backpack and slid out, locking the car behind me.

Peace

2011-11-21T09:37:00.001-05:00

He stood so blindly by you,
while you pulsed against your name,
you strain and all the ties of your heart
twisted harder, were climbed by stinging
insects. Prickle by fierce cold,
danced far over by violent clouds.
You wait, and your whole breast
swelled with

against your flat stomach.
You were everywhere blue, and he
stood by never looking in, on, over,
never leaning forward. He walked to one
corner, through one rain, to one false gap
in the buildings, down one street where maybe

but did not.

By It I See

2011-11-11T00:38:00.001-05:00

With the sun about to lay a foil of gold
on the hedge, to bring light buzzing
from the east, some form of shoulders
emerging from between the trees and the shed,
don't give up on your green eyes.
You have been alone watching wind
shake the poplars. There is no shape of smile in the bud

rising up among the hothouse herbs
on the window sill where Light curves through glass
like a cracked love through clay, a watering can
running with rain through a leaking side. Given
what? What light? To start with; need, the people, fragments
unpatched, a bare trunk where leaves spin,
separate, hopes rot, lonely eyes slump, unseen,

go bloodshot, smear, cry, crack. An unwashed glass
of sorrow, a thirst of the heart lashes you
in yourself shut, tired, tied by grafting wire.
What does the east have to do with me, a single dry sapling?
Do eyes see to see nothing? Someone let the garden go wild,
a change of heat to the rain whistling, the red kettle
drawing thin steam in the air. A sound tangles roots

just out of sight below the soil, when it comes
the way the sun tells the story, at the end
of a sad year. It dies. Before it comes again,
in the moment when the first green pinch leaves
your soft eye, a moth with veined wings flies off,
a body, an ash in the face of ash appearing to yourself
seeing light between me and the sorrow. Light between.

Brave

2011-11-04T08:08:00.001-04:00

My little sister who can't breathe,
sitting on a bench outside the barber's,
eleven years old and kicking her feet,
watching the cars go by and hoping that sometime
air will fill her up again.

Oh, little sister with skinny legs, afraid
that this is your last tear, turned to vapor
with the tip of your finger. For a moment
let your eyes watch the light bending inside
the round roof and turning the sunshot trees
upside down, like a spark of the flame
eating up your chest.

It can be seen, tasted, walked on, watched
but not talked about. It turns the saddest twigs
for a single instant into the wick of sudden fire.
In the vapor of boiling salt water, in every second
that comes before relief, breath, it runs in
like the ocean. It cuts the old hair clean.

Inches Thick of Self

2011-10-02T14:43:00.000-04:00

I am wet with seasons

of frost and fire, stretched as the

limbs of a nighttime leaning tree,

black on the grave bank,

black against the sky,

with the arms of a burned black candlestick

holding up the stars.

O Fire,

Fire

O Fire in pain

and

Pain in fire,

O Pain,

Pain

What blaze of blameworthiness,

What insufficient gaze at the self?

One unhinged, soot coated, glorified

body pasted over with rot wet bark,

green at the heart, dying somewhere

between the surface and the unseen,

a little bird unhatched in a cracked shell,

the game of deceit about being

the one worthy of the feat of the night sky

collapses and I collapse.

My fingers burn under the half moon

of the nail, where the dead growth

should be cut off.

OPain

Ifind

OFire

And all this because I am a liar,

to myself, and to the watching world

rolling by like ingots in a river, sunk

under cold water. Cold, cold

water, a sleeping child, the seeds

of fastening metal, and other trees

all hear my lie, whether listening

or like me suffering the weather.

OFire

The crucible that I would cast you,

that I would cast for you,

that I would cast you into

and all my heart

and all my head

would save you

would stop this

would pull you back

would leave you unburned

would bleed you

would leave you unrefined

But me being mine, a cold soaked

swaggering trunk, oozing with the weight

of winter and the shower of my collapsing

self peeling into the slow river,

how can I know what knife would cut

you to the quick and end up killing you?

O Pain

Would kill you

would end that vein of beauty that is your

promise for the future,

your heart of courage that is your own heart,

your green movement, and leave you only yourself

seeing the abuse of ice shouting down the green

alone, a thing cut off by inches thick of self,

a thing of mind without the smoke of breath

so burned you’re only ash and only ash is left.

O Power

Power

O Power in lies

and

Lies in power,

O ice,

wind,

fire.

I can only burn and lean frozenly.

I can only touch you like a torch to a wick,

and all my tricks that deceive me too

my lies I lie to you, my green attempts

at the truth
What do they touch?

Is there some truly sunfed part of me?

Some heart of distant fire feeding?

What, unless the heat of a star,

can bridge between liar and liar?

O we singular unknowers,

we failures at perception,
at confession,

at love.

Groaning and ingrown,

we can only at most hope to burn

and burning to destroy,

and burning to embalm,

to brew tea bitterly in summer steam

in the leaves and obscure the stars,

and who’s to say

that we may not burn our whole self away,

and the old bark, soaked in rain,

andthe green heart smothering,

may both be lost in smoke and fragrance,

the tips of leaves, the temperature of new

growth simmering in the water,
but there is that sliver of a chance,
wide as the moon, maybe,
that when the fire is gone,
there will still be something
to smolder open in rings.

Is God

2011-09-19T11:20:00.000-04:00

Is the God in the smoky crease between mountains?
His hide smells like saddle leathers. He strides purposefully
Up my skin. Bite my face with cold air, God. Whistle. Come Here.
What little water I wade in is a bath for this being.
How blindingly reflected sun writes a triangle in the sky with me
For the God to disappear in. I will find him
At the obtuse angel of a sapling seed and the metrics of threes.
The heart that beats at me within my chest, the rest
I get against my restlessness, scribbles a scribbles a lie
Detector test of my breath of spirit. A rough, vertical relief, in pictures.
God, ordain a passing grade for me, a breakout from calendar
Squares. Like my searching eyes traveling for a sip of
Sunlight to spring, a cliff face ripple, my whole shining
Mountain of flesh, my cosmic smallness, asks a question
With itself in its existence, and is an answer about God.
Where there is life in a mountain climb, a punishing rod, a disaster
And the black swallow flying, the bird of the universe speckled
With rock dust stars, the three foundations of certainty, Shockingly
Bursts from a cluster of underbrush so I rear back, unsettinged.
It is a pine forest. There is a timberline even among star fed evergreens.
Divine being is manifest in the meeting of the mind with wonder
And unselfish awe beyond the understanding of desire. Where selfish
Fear sees its own destruction, and graphs its trajectory up the mountain
Number by number, like a flock of humble sacrifices, flashing wings,
The heart to heart of horse and rider, where one body bears up
Another, not only as if in love, but at the chapel crest, the bald
Cut stone green like a gem and polished wet, with full lungs
Like voices contrapuntally coinciding, like a born scrap of flesh.

Machining, 3 A.M.

2011-07-13T12:01:00.003-04:00

I opened the door to the smell of a rotten tackle box,
old rubber worms, rusty lures.
There was oil everywhere, a mess
of metal chips sharper than a tin can rim
stuck to every wall and ceiling,
to the pockets of my pants and shirt seams.

It's lit by fluorescence like this that makes me
night sick and worn down my back. The wind
is cooling down. Water doesn't touch me until
my short breaks, leaning on the threshold.
I would lay down, but fish don't sleep
at the open door, a drill bit whistling for geese,

a passing truck glowing like a floating row of men
with lanterns guiding me through an unseen
tunnel ribbed with branches. I feel like a child
waiting happily for a feather bed until I stand
slimed in grease over a bucket of knives,
my throat on fire, clothed in my nightshift.

Swallowed

2011-06-25T08:30:00.003-04:00

When summer came, and the heat of the day,
when the eggs cracked and filled with rain,
when I waded out on the submerged rock wall
and watched the sun rise on the water at my knees,

June covered me like a coat,
a heavy mouth, a moth eaten
daily routine, and I fell asleep.

When I dreamed through a cool warehouse light,
When three hundred dollars bought my swollen wrist,
When I caught a ride through day after day of weariness
and lit my eyes on a white slip of inky sailcloth,

moodiness had me swallowed,

and somewhere a voice said,

you're deep in the belly of June.

When my eyelids flickered on the overnight bus,

when I turned twenty-three under a bomber's wing,

when I put on a suit and said 'I write fantasy'

and saw Adam and Eve dancing into history,

June made of iron fluttered free,

caught between the longing for love,

and struggle for the legal tender.

Sugar

2011-05-31T08:35:00.004-04:00

From black earth, fierce
light, wet air, traveling bodies,
it grew unnoticed,
flew

Up singing, surprising
itself, the whole earth rolling
forward sweat, rotator
damage,

A disconsolate distiller
sated on steam, bending any bite
of sweetness to rum,
alone

In the salt of wounds.
Once drunk, once ill minded,
once so satisfied with thin
untimeliness

Thieving his very eyes,
the light air world stoops,
ears abuzz, vowing
silent

Cracks planting stone
toward sediment. Damp
walls drip. The heart
entombs.

He will taste love

on his tongue, sugercane

ripe, if he nurtures

harvest,

Grips it heartily

by the hand, the scythe

separating root and

heart.

Unfeeling bands, unhanded
animal lungs, give up
the stalk and fruit, burying
eyes

Intending to deny
the very shaft of sweetness
rooted in the world,
disbelieving

Hope may wing itself, promise
good in movement alone,
teach work for work, good
return

In labor without fermentation,
simply in greenness
of youth, self-delighted
maturity.

A strong single sinew
may rope neck and elbow
together, may raise up an
arm,

May wake the dawn sleeper,
place a tool in his hand,
say take, and feed of it,
children

Who will know rest. One
like this, only one. Rest
for him alone, for his crystal
offering.

17 On

2011-05-24T21:29:00.001-04:00

Annery
Circle. Circle. Dance
without waiting for judgement,
without fear, show off.

Bekah
Trimmed at your ears,
the better to thunder with.
Do you hear smiles now?

Ben
What do you care for
this pageant, this ribbon show?
A smiling paper.

Darcy
Wordy Hotdog! this
childhood Hotdog! dancing
with your bright Hotdog!

Hannah
You are not unwell,
a spirit so blazing joy
in keen womanhood.

John
Some seeds fall wasted
in ink. Daub your picture fast
with love and courage.

Kate
Drink your company
a health by the thundering
in your glass; good sense.

Laura
Could we reach the rocks
in time, or find ourselves young
like we were last year?

Leah
Your traveling heart
expected joy, photograph
in hand; space for me.

Lindsay
Searing eggs, peppers,
Tennessee, book publishing;
a new Eucharist.

Lydia
Fertile singing mind,
does any string dare stop,
when you plead, you play?

Meg
I ate more berries
than you offered; your eyes, hands,
feathers, and gently.

Mia
Come back here, Mister!
Silly friend, why did I run
if not for this hug?

Paul
Without writing you
cannot thrill in native tongues,
or call mud 'glory'.

Pete
What peace of mind comes
through a bruise, a broken block,
a fallen tower?

Rob
A kingly collar
commands this office: go out
into the desert.

Sarah
Closed box for a day,
gold lid, wound to sing at dusk,
in the scent of smoke.

Bargains

2011-05-11T07:26:00.000-04:00

Collecting debts
is the force behind many
of the old stories.
Bargains with the devil
who comes to collect.
This is the Old World way.
The scriptures use
many times a good man
who waits for his dues
while the reprobate denies him.
Is the moral evil
with the one who lends
or the one who borrows?

Shelled Body

2011-05-02T10:50:00.003-04:00

On a bed under blood,
under the gun,
at the far end of the steel eye,
the body of one enemy,
one terrifying aspect,
one smile,
one heart gone into hiding,
falls like a sacrifice
behind walls twelve feet high.

O Rejoice, through the cathode ray,
O Sing and Dance in Washington
as the sun falls like fire into the bedroom
where one woman was made
a human shield, shot through
with implacable resolve
while the sky crawled,
pregnant with locusts of death,
metal, years of self-de-human-heart-
on-the-altar-ization for the cause,
the loss of innocence, and willingness
to touch the mouth of terror
with the silence of the grave.

The trail of a courier
delivered the visage up,
on the doorstep of soldiery,
discipline, the ant swarm
black with gunoil
passing along clips
for the internet, the chirps that sound
sweetly, inspire death, feed hatred,
feed self-exaltation at the fall of an enemy.

What made man hang
on lines as thin as spider's webs,
watching for some news, some proof,
some undoctored beard
painted in the secrets of the heart, falling
through the roof like a corpseless angel?
We all, we watchers, we singers
as the sun climbs like a cloud
over the Atlantic coast, imagine
the penalty paid on the pillows,
imagine peace, and a new bloodless
resolve to causation, while black shelled
bodies still crawl, sights still lock,
soldiers still sacrifice their souls
in the name of childhood,
and walls, walls, walls,
are built telenetrically.

Exquisite Rebirth

2011-04-25T01:19:00.003-04:00

Does a dead seed bear live fruit?
O, dried shell. Empty doorway.
Window onto an upside down world.
When you are down and watered
Take root, travel
Through the glass,
Even unhinged, open onto rain
Flying skyward, serpents winding
Counter clockwise, fire burning
The whole world without oxygen
In the murky dark,
Sun red through
An eyelid, an eggshell, a swan ship
Sailing north through a flowerbed,
Where, head raised, slipping
Through fog, surreal insect fire
Escape, ocean
Landing hatch
Onto a dusky city made of clay
Models colored like the birdless
Mountains, greets like a gatepost
Wound with kingly, interracial trees
Without a crown
To carry, landmarks
Noted for their photogenic faces,
Pastries, far off pearl and silver
Spikes, and lettered chickens. There
May a small stem become stentorian.

Fruitful Time Spent Shoveling

2011-04-18T23:36:00.000-04:00

When I'm slipping through ice
up to my ankles in plastic
boots, scraping with my head
down against the cracked
cement, and the trees
petrify with cold, shine
metallically, shout angrily
as their sleep splinters, I do not
anticipate budding sprouts.

My hairy shoulders scratch
sweatily inside my jacket
and sorely stiffen. The drive
must be worked for. Safety
from slipping, breaking ribs,
injury in an incautious doze,
demands payment: my joints.
Ah, Comfort, saving yourself
for warm moments, I begrudge you

your slowness in coming.
I forget, when I'm holding on
to the metal snow shovel,
that ice is for northern Februaries,
slush for northern Marches,
seedlings for April, and blooming
May is the home of a coatless
sun. After I have suffered
I will wake up and Spring will come.

A Bale

2011-04-04T08:27:00.004-04:00

I will build my wife of baling wire,
her spine thin as a whip, and steel,
curling like a winter green snow pea
toward the sun, gunmetal bright,
and stronger than a thousand
twisted cords.

She'll dance in circles and wrap
tight my hay heart, taking tension,
expanding past the point of expansion
in my skin, cut red with welts,
burning for hours by conduction

in the high, cold wind, the mountain storm.
She will teach the wind to play her harp strings,
warm and low, a moan across the foothills
bent around my fingers like a hand clasped
for a ballet lift, a scene

in the shift of life, where the art created
is the body itself, and the movement is God
in the stillness between bends, her elbows
static with the charge of herself and the world.

When rages and passions pass through her,
heart beats will alternate, lungs resist,
dry grasses burst into flame and elephants
fall dead at her slightest touch. She will remain

while powers travel her like a channel. Winding,
graceful, fully herself, selfless and wise, understanding
the aviary of her abdomen, she will channel all spirits
of the air, all powers, fuel all transport, technology,
and soaring songs, tunes of music, hymns of her own

design rolling through heat waves, harmonizing
with her fingers plucking feathers for flight
from the strings, the sky she builds, the further children
at her feet, children of her binding to me.
I will
trust in my body, but pains and slow entropy

creep where only blood moves through the bones,
anger brings on a headache, the many days of memories
let go an afternoon of philosophy, and even love
shears the soul in two, seeding it into the earth.

My black metal bride will wind my deathbed,
framing pulverized absence, recomposing, spanning
the gap of my chest, a coat of maille, a shelter,
and when we are put to rest, she'll bundle my bones
and burnish them, grieving without tears, until

at the end of things, she will wade into the sea
and rust.
Her fragments that I have caressed
and kissed
will welcome barnacles, dissolve like blood
in the bodies of currents, stain fisheyes red
and give them, like the world, a heart of iron.

Oil

2011-03-28T22:50:00.003-04:00

Oils of the earth, honey-silk,
soft running gold and known
for disliking water, salving
cracks, saving metal and
jeweling dark tridents

poisonously in the wood,
leaking when pressed from the olive,
muttering complaints to the chemist
who cracks you from the smelted mess
of acids, esters, and aromatics,

pleasantly whispering to the old cook
with vegetables in hand,
speaking with a surly tongue
from the stainless vat
to the frathouse fatso,

sliding in the cylinders of cars,
weeping in the crevices of skin
on every mammal's body,
burning from candles and masterworks,
flame distilled and made essential

extracts, compresses, maritime vitamins,
cleaners, seducers, coronas, peacemakers,
lubricators, used crude and refined
by human hands and tongues and eyes,
your obliging nature has been our achievement

and survival.

Body and Sun

2011-03-22T00:00:00.002-04:00

Dark pants ground with red
mud from the first meltoff, inverted
pockets emptied of pencils and keys

At an imaginary point in the atmosphere
anticrepuscular rays appear to converge
at dusk, at a distance from the city

Two greasy jackets that reflected
a mound of embers at the stone fire rim,
smelling like meat soot and onions

Ecliptic dust chalks out anthelic arcs
at the antisolar point, tricking the eye
with an intersection of bending light

An undershirt stretched by breathing
for days, sweat white, and lacking
the crispness that goes with unfolding

Through the subsun and gegenschein,
the subparhelic circle meets in perfect
halos rarely seen and quickly diffused

socks worn to webs, sweaters stuck
with hair, a kilt for celebrations
that must be washed to be worn.

Cygnus Mobile

2011-03-07T12:53:00.001-05:00

I did not hang my stars on you,
painted black, though you are

to my eye designed as a cross.
Words suspend pointed arms,

waving on strings, that fail to
reach the ground and do not hold

true north. The pillow down
under a low, spangled ceiling

is not a mountain home showing
heaven through a cloudy hole.

Imperial Lilly

2011-02-28T02:33:00.004-05:00

'These flowers are so unusual...'

Low lilly, High lilly,
Bloomed too soon lilly,
Bloomed too late,

Would you be happy to fall
like the snow,
to spread out your body
under the beaming eye
and give yourself up to topographic
uniformity? It would save you
from these words -
  anxious anxious
   anxious anxious
O, the accusations of the restless
spirits afraid, uncommon, the crowd,
buzz with the promise of better bees,
imply hives of richer honey.
I promise you this:
   you will be cold.
Stand yourselves, my beautifuls,
feeling so dried and sapless, untied
from the river soil. Your hearts drink
enough little drops of Helios to become

more than the helices
in your crown.

'... it only takes one to three [gowns] to create a nice display.'

Troubler

2011-02-21T09:39:00.006-05:00

For Flora S. Nickerson Down on the Labrador

Icelight, you were built
a thousand years ago
by the cold knuckles
whales gave to God
on their first anniversary.
Hidden in the North,
chuckling behind your collar
at the slow deceits of stars,
your heart suffered rigidity

while the deep sea generations
took their deaths in the south,
layer upon layer, far from
the surface and your sight,
offering no sympathy for your
growing bulk. Angry and isolated,
you style yourself troubler
of the sea, and take no joy
in like company.

I came,
well toward dawn, to see
you cowled in frozen salt.

You may not melt, or free
yourself. Folded in misery

from the beginning, you choose
only to reflect the moon.

Graveyard Shift

2011-02-15T10:04:00.003-05:00

Rattle to the right.
Rattle to the right.
Rattle to the right
in the middle of the night.
Rattle out your life.
Give it as a gift.
Rattle to the right,
it's the graveyard shift.

Charlie was a boatman
standing on the bank,
humming to the river
as it bubbled and stank.

Horace was a logger
bound to the tree
by the bones of his leg
that he couldn't get free.

Rattle to the right.
Rattle to the right.
Rattle to the right
in the middle of the night.
Rattle to the gates
with your cargo adrift.
Rattle to the right,
it's the graveyard shift.

Underneath a lantern
smiling like the moon,
Charlie played a dirge
with a white soup spoon.

Drinking in the water
flowing to the south
Horace played the rhythm
with a coin in his mouth.

Rattle to the right.
Rattle to the right.
Rattle to the right
in the middle of the night.
Rattle out your boat.
Give the log a lift.
Rattle to the right,
it's the graveyard shift.

Charlie put Horace

on a low wooden bench,

crayfish in his trousers

and a sulfamide stench.

The pair made a dance
in the swing of the oars
looking for a sign
of invisible shores.

Rattle to the right.
Rattle to the right.
Rattle to the right
in the middle of the night.
Rattle in a box
moving sweet and swift.
Rattle to the right,
it's the graveyard shift.

A Sense of Place

2011-02-08T22:15:00.006-05:00

Who am I,
   Toronto?

Eyes that see
   your big steam sheets making business
   buildings look like lazy sunbright laundresses

Smells that nose

your slushy seasoned once(New)York oils

   in concrete and frozen fingered peanut butter.
Hands that touch
   your parliamentary red sandstone to learn
   the history of a stolen gold crowned stick
Tastes that tongue
   your roti meat sauce crumbling yellow
   islands of salt onto the straw placemat
Ears that hear
   your long sitar practice of the Maharaja
   collection private dance accompanist

I am Toronto,
   who are you?

Newborn Lamb

2011-02-01T10:39:00.010-05:00

Do you ask for another log on the fire,

Honored David?

Father David,

do you ask for another log on the fire

where the coals are warm and bright?

What do you do in your old old age,
fevered David?
Feeble David,
what do you do in your old old age
to fill your cracked skin with wine?

Logs just burns with a frosty light,
My son Nathan.
Long-tongued Nathan,
logs just burn with a frosty light,
and don't warm an old man's bones.

Do you ask for the fleece of a newborn lamb,
blameless David?
Shameless David,
do you ask for the fleece of a newborn lamb
like a wick to the flame of your throne?

A newborn lamb won't clothe this back,
virgin Nathan.
Purging Nathan,
a newborn lamb won't clothe this back
all as broad as the length of a spear.

You take to your bed a Shunammite girl,

lying David.

Dying David,

you take to your bed a Shunammite girl

like a lamp to an old man’s tomb.

What can there be that will warm your tongue,

blessed David?

Shepherd David,

what can there be that will warm your tongue
and your hands to the harp of praise?

Caw

Choral

2011-01-24T00:06:00.000-05:00

Three measures of air hold me above
the tideline, and the salt. I ascend
and descend, when the waves
process upon me in white gowns

trying to pronounce the bass
notes of my name. In my chest
closed down on a beating heart
a sound at the scale of fish

muffles itself below the water.
My throat, a house of tubes,
with every breath blows out
my musical bouyancy, unfringed

by color and depth. Approached
from below, my roots promise
to lift me in flight, or plunge me
down in death. I will live on

a diverse array of chords
like a hangman wrapping the neck
of his lute, sleeping under water,
where peace by music lowered

through perceptions of myself
into the ocean's stony egg
stasis will close my bubbled eyes
and whales will watch over me.

Caw

Seize Up

2011-01-18T15:32:00.004-05:00

With a broken bank, investments clink
like doom, a thief. Invisibly, I randomize
my mind, disguise myself to myself.

Engine, Engine number nine
going down the stupid line,
if you crash, who cares?
Do you want your money back?
Sponge. Five. Four.
One. Two. Three.

Childishly, I want to count down
God. Decision is cold and hard.
No letters hide me. My name
signs my fate on the bottom line.

River in a roadside show,
catch a tiger by the toe,
bait him to a roadside ditch,
take away his family tree.
Take control away from me,
ice above and ice below

snow like dandruff scratched
off an undecided head. I am
not able to bribe away my mind.

Caw

A Headwound

2011-01-10T01:23:00.010-05:00

Cracked in the head by a door handle,
I was drinking water in the basement.
It's a dark place beneath the church
where people come to refresh their souls.

I was tired, and stumbled to a chair
with my eyes closed. Did I hear noises?
Warriors shuffling? Not reaching the seat,
I lay on my back and lifted my hands

to hold my mind where it seemed
the building had dealt me a blow.
Those Fariskur tunnels terrify me
when I am alone, looking for glass

jars to lift to my mouth. I will fortify,
if I can pass steel doors in the desert
road paved with with papal pardons
seven or eight times, my parched throat.

I swallow desert sensations. The water arced
(is this St. Louis?) painfully, paid for
in spiny pieces, winding cranially.
My tongue dribbled ice on itself, moatlike

air teasing around the stairs. I am there.
I could taste nothing, I could not speak.
Searching for the light in this place
is deamlike, a crusade. A headwound

compounds the walking into revel.
A voice from the corner would say
build me a chapel, and drain blood
under my eyelids. A motet of lights

murmurs in Francophone. My lips
dessicate. I move. I stand. Shock makes
the world gold. I stave off the weariness
of being struck against the temple.

Caw

Graham Crackers

2010-12-29T00:56:00.007-05:00

'I need to figure out what I owe.'
She held out the graham cracker
in the hall, she was smiling
but confused enough to be scared.
I tried to smile back

comfort and reassurance without
fixating on the brown mass
to the left of her nose.
'I didn't have this yesterday.'
She waited for me to give

directions. Her neighbor arrived.
'It's okay for you to have them.'
She turned to someone else
with as much white wire on
their head and said, 'these?'

Caw

Machinist Cruciform

2010-12-26T14:41:00.010-05:00

Landscapers drone

two buildings distant,

lunch hour hypnotists

perform worship

funhouse

smiling working

blind

behold play

Strange dreams enter

the Machine World

through sunblindness

oil belts

trip

leisure power

art

ooze blades

Cool grass under

my working back

shines and prickles.

Caw

Concourse

2010-12-18T01:36:00.007-05:00

Stilting along the wall,
his face sucked into the balloon
of his hood, hidden,
the spider walker is edging
the arena where majors sip
murk, and women in beige
drage their bags behind them
rattling against the stones.
Down the ramp at half-past
each step comes down separately,
decidedly. He is a cripple
in the mind, for fear
hovering at the door, keeping
his hands on the brass
bar, he hears the siren
advertisement resound
against glass shut out cold.
‘A quarter for a ride!’
A quarter for a ride!
and the assiduous queues,
the silent lines in black
overcoats, sprouted like legumes
to enrich the grunge, rooted
on the spot and hawked
colognes, waxed cheeks, watches.
Across from him, waiting,
stands a body still with life,
a Korean girl, throat bunched
in turquoise. He watches
her difference, back to the wall.
At her waist a bag is clutched.
She won’t see him. Between
them, squatting and scratching
at the wall for power, a transient
enters the nexus, his computer
glowing on his beard, one still leg
extended into the babble where
the train station travelers
rush. Mothers dive and redive
snatching bits of paper, gems,
stuffed toys. Every near thing
screams, rattles, ticks, knocks
smooth black leather, gold rims,
jewelry. Is a mess on the floor
swept smooth by men in uniform
between briefcases, cafés, chaos
to board on time? Cropped,
washed and totally mad,
they are all riding. A poster
hanging over them, thirty feet
of sex, smiles down. Frozen
in a frame, unpassing, her influence
is the mover and the scent of seduction.
The Korean smiles back, she sees
the woman past the plastic. Unpushed,
she is in a bubble by her willingness
to stand in this present time, claiming
a moment. The cracked computer
shows its owner a thousand pages
of poetry that she cannot see, but is,
and he, with his, devotes his back
to the solid stone, and reads an ode
to old things. His curly moss commits
minerals from the chin of silence
hushed by noise and turmoil. Tumult
rains under the mile of vaulting, a storm
in the high treasure house. Lives
lost, run to ground, mixed in soldiers’
coffee cups, luggage, lost innocence
that won’t let one stand still.
To escape, the walker presses
the glass open, takes to the snow
and feels the prickle on his jaw.

Caw

Halfway, Highway

2010-12-01T00:50:00.004-05:00

Half my mind

is a bright half-angel

carved in soap

against the windshield rain.

She rose with her hand

on her hip, acid washed

blindly by the pit bull

mechanic, as a hundred pound

block of sassy ivory.

Gold eyes tell you she’s made

of more than one paint.

Crescented at the waist,

determined to hold her wrists right,

she’s the one that will stare you down

at the stoplight, grip you tighter

at sundown, and lay claim

to a double-succession

across the borders of noon and lunacy.

When I rode snug

on a side of beef for a thousand

miles before it was capped

under the sweeping headdress

of descending curls,

I dreamed of such a wheel

within me, turning around

the circle of werebites and predation,

victim tears and, surprise

disappearance.

In me, cleanliness is not simplicity.

Abstinence is not virginity. In me,

submission is masculinity.

Pass for a wastrel in the ways

of the mind, pass for divine,

pass for a target or tangential

line. Follow me with the freezer

truck but don’t pack me away.

Caw

Slight of Palm

2010-11-22T10:09:00.003-05:00

Joy is her world

(the second nature).

Go to meet her.

The little murmur,

she was soft,

in the mirror lost

she was simply Sunday

distracted, dispensationally

undisposed. Ah, (a sigh

at the eye's edge) cotton.

I remember, faintly

she saw a dainty fly,

how he went out

like candle wicked

ampersand dune wind.

She hugged him.

Surprise, sunshine

at the beach. Will she

turn her heel on the curb

climbing and look up
and la la hurrah! la
find her way into the reeds?

Bells. A sheet on the line.

(The second war world)

Unversal (she) Nature.

Caw

A Jetty

2010-11-03T18:26:00.002-04:00

We are all humans here,
we agonistes, swimming
in white bubbles, we mites
vibrating like shaken sand,
except for the cats snuggling

together under the railing,
one lying down close to light
from the ocean, a kissing
head descending in angel
ministrations. Ribs pressed

tight against each other, silent
over the sea, they watch without
saying a word. In company
the birds too, the multitudes,
crying in one voice a thousand

moods, chiefly wounds and desire,
are not humans. Like fossils
washed together, like salt
licked pillars, they are the world
in its forms, shrill as a boatswain’s

whistle, an earful. Beautiful
when looked upon. Stoney
at the heart. Theodicy
stirs in the forge of human sight,
dueling loneliness and cold.

Will He come up from the sea?
Rise, stonelike, and command?
Will he speak recognizably?

His hand skirts low on the light
posts like the wings of pipers.
His voice is a croak, blistering
water into white lips and paper
rags. Warm like the cat's fur,
a freckled jetty stud, a stirring
under the boardwalk, God
is not a friend like yourself
but like the world. Built into
with bridges, we might see him
with wings on, billowing
in the salt of his own body.

Caw

Bouguereau's Mourning

2010-10-24T22:08:00.003-04:00

A pale chin pointed
toward heaven, a breast
painted white. His eyes
at rest. In the shadow,
blood. In the field,
stubble. The harvest
has come. In a rush
they swept, black
with sacrificial oils,
naked and hidden
from the eyes of God.
They are folded over
the body, touching
flesh to flesh, feeding
on the smoke. Choking
on death. His mouth
has eaten the shepherd's
ash. Does he kiss?

Caw

Building

2010-10-19T08:35:00.000-04:00

It's the summer, and I'm looking

at flowers, with trees behind them.
Spray a little water for we bloomers,
give a little love tap for the weaker
ones still sprouting. Choked out
by the crowd, looking individual
for a little while with our friendly stems
close together on the railing. We open up
to the sun. But then, there isn't really any us,

is there? Just me, standing still

on the porch, where one board rots

under the sticky sealant. I want to say

what has already been said - the

barbarous summer, the coming death

of winter, leaves dying by abscission,

something about the hearts of people

rotting like wood, or separating from

the trunk that will somehow stand

the cold without splitting. If we were
cut and dried, square sided, we might
be used. I might be. What wood is
there left in backyards? None is
good. No tree wants to splinter,
but here we are, with summer gone.
Now to keep its veins from freezing

the water must stop flowing. We

like to talk about bleeding, we

fighters, we couch locked ones. O!

our fallen hearts. We stay alone.

When the frost pinches our noses

just hard enough, where the vein

runs one gauzy skin from the surface,

a red crystal rolls to the tip, and blood

falls like an icicle, too dark to glitter,

opaque and unbeautiful, a clod of

turf, and not a ruby, against the frozen

wood. It's a treeline to get lost in,
the vision of the self expanded.

What a view into the outside world.
A view into me, seeing the ice crack
us when the temperature drops below
zero, and the bushes in the back, and the

crabapple, groan. It still won't snow.

There is nothing to cover us like steam

at the train station in old movies. No

Romance of the rails, squealing cars

like some kind of soundtrack. No hugs

bring us teary eye to eye. Winter cut

that off, and the thaw shows cracks

in elbow joints. The trunk isn't as whole

as we had hoped. There are stale nuts

in the squirrel hole. The porch lost that

board. The flowers are bare sticks,

like skeleton arms around each

other. Walking on the platform is too

dangerous, and it's all wet with rain,

so I stay inside again, and it doesn't

feel like either safe or prison. It's not

the home that other people have, just

mine, it's not the jungle, the garden,

or the laboratory. It's not the social

experiment. It's me, and my back porch,

and summer's coming again, soon. Maybe
there will be flowers once they're planted.

Caw

Good Old Days

2010-10-12T00:32:00.001-04:00

Golden Roosevelts sing in unison.
They are the heads of state
creating the days when men
triumphed over all forces of evil
and made fools of foreign nations.

Hurrah!
To the hunt, I say, to the glamorous
home of the wandering bison!

The blessed honey
of the American comb,
the sunny halo in the pioneer’s hair,
and the glossy black of the American
bear shuffling through the headwaters
swiftly cleaned
in the scrubbing of alcohol. Clear the way,
you dusky stain, this land will be fair.

O mores!
O, the days were all that we could ask and more!

These men were strong.
Their arms were bent at the golden angle
by forces of inimitable literacy,
at the oars of boats howling throatily
for all just causes, all provision
for the next generation of Johnny Appleseed,
spreading widely, generously,
the spirit of total fertility.

Yes, father, you are the leader
carrying the sun to dawn in your fist!

Minds were guided as all minds should be.
Every man could read.
Every boy embraced with utmost joy
his red welts, his good discipline.
They were as gentle as iron
weighed out by an aesthete,
never crawled in holes but showed
their faces to the enemy
they fed as well as they ate
and crushed under their heel.

What a jolly lark!
We spit them easily on our right to rule!

That was the age when the world
spun at divine speed, the best
possible world, wrestled from the hands
of cowards (may they wither!), brutes
(be beaten!), and the savage eye laid
down upon the ivory woman and the daughter
fit to be the wife of my strapping boy.

Stand up!
Heir of unwavering buoyancy, this
your domain awaits your discipline!

Nature chained to the rifle, wives
trained to a tea and the railroad
penetrating the highest mountain
of these fifty states, the days
burned in the sun’s behind
like a brand.

Ah!
The days when men ruled the land!

Caw

Cover a Multitude in Soils

2010-09-28T23:11:00.000-04:00

The farmer waits for the produce of the soil.

Is anyone Cheerful? He should sing praises.
The early and the late rains come in time.
Elijah was a man with a nature like ours.
It did not rain upon the earth for three years.

Is anyone among you Suffering? He must pray.
As an example of patience, take the prophets.
Do not swear an oath by heaven or by earth.
The prayer offered in faith will restore.

Is anyone Sick? Doctor him with oils.
The sky poured rain, the earth produced fruit.
We count those blessed who endured.
If a man strays from the truth he will dry up.

One who turns back the earth will cover much.

Caw

Itch, General

2010-09-13T09:04:00.001-04:00

Grass rolls like fighters

over your Maginot, onto

your bed under the window.

Lip out, eyes wide

with the burning, midnight,

your neck and armpits

are blistered into towers

where artillery has fired

from inside, and cratered

you out. The ooze of that

damaged land is under

your fingernails. Every

hour you tear yourself

wishing that your bed

would smooth and silence

the crack of cannonfire.

You are, I see, in terror.

These are the nightmares

for a ruler like yourself,

a strategist enflamed

with competitions, at only

nine-years-old, suffering

throughout the day without

the relief from the home front,

until some sideways word

spoken from another child

snaps you from inner turmoil,

fleshly rebellion, to almost wonder

out loud how you could come

under fire from an insider.

You ask me now, with all

the boys asleep, and only

the two of us looking down

at your rebellious chest,

what kind of weapon kills

your own skin’s willfulness.

Caw

Poems

2010-09-05T23:30:00.002-04:00

In the last week I've written a poem every day. For the rest of the year I want to post a poem a week. This one has been on my mind for a while.

Prodigy, USA

In the first instance, it's in the mind.
From the beginning, he's a child,
he's five, and he's already be choosing
between Uzi and Mac-10,
and ten years later its the same
for his brother. Add another
ten. Did he cross the line
at the point when he first gripped
the handle, first fired?

My friend is a worshipper of violence -
he sings of swords - and one wound
turned his stomach, one bloody thumb.
It's enough for him to say enough
one minute. But then push play.
Blood pours from his lips with the anthem
like it's the easiest thing to sing, the
right song to celebrate, to baptize, the day.
He's halfway to a killer.

He's no Crip, he's still
not numb, there is no soldiery
in him, no sucked up seed
of a high brass load at close range,
no sidewalk gutter clogged
because the blood was given
time to dry. Blood born,
blood bought? He doesn't have
the old needle scars or the board
over his window, under his back
for a bed. His three brothers
all lived to see their mother turn fifty.

Push play again, play
pushing thumbsticks, pulling
triggers. Every winner learns
tricks and trades secrets. Hiding
in the one shadow, grenades
first, at close range switch
to automatic, but it's fake,
electric. My brother claims
to maintain his innocence.
He's halfway to a killer.

Is there iron in his eyes?
No, he's still young, twisting
his finger into crown signs.
To the outsiders he looks a clown,
and clowning is his cover,
underneath, the gold spikes
are striking into a kidney,
the knives of a twelve-year-old
paying the entrance fee.

War on war won't work.
No action on 'combatants' breeds
pacifists. No dealings down
the barrel turn the inner man
to different visions.
It's all the same words,
and heroes are still built
on body count. No game of blood
is game, no song of blood is
sane, and no boy of blood, with
blisters from the handle
to his name, is changed. No,
he's halfway to a killer.

Caw

Sun Bleaching

2010-09-01T11:10:00.000-04:00

Every moment has been summer since returning to the country.
It was summer before summer began, because I was finished with school and I was freed from the ash cloud that had kept me stuck in a bottle with friends in Oxford and the sun was hot the way the sun is in the good old United States of America.

To kickstart that summer, I went to Gordon and got myself graduated.
Friends welcomed me there with as much enthusiasm as I could have hoped for. As soon as I stepped out of the car there were hugs, laughs, claps of the back. We cheered, we sang and danced, and on and on. I broke my glasses on someone's shoulder. That sort of thing. The celebration was half my return and half the coming departure that my return signaled to all of us. We were finished, and let me tell you, it was summer. Standing in long lines in those black plastic gowns was hot, and not even the faces we friends made together as we waited to start could really let off the steam.

When the time came, I marched up under the shade of the podium and accepted my slip of plastic. It marked what it does for the graduate, the end of a period of study. For me that little blue case was the lid on both studies and travels, and closed up everything from Coy pond to Aachen Cathedral. It means studying Robert Penn Warren with Dr. Borgman and it means playing my Irish whistle over the Derwentwater. I tucked that diploma case under my arm and marched off to my parents car, where I sat down and realized that how much I was going to miss all the people that were being left behind as well. We ate some ice cream sundaes with my grandmother and I went home.

I wasn't on the couch for long.
A quick rest, a few visits with friends, and I was away again, back to Boston and another new experience - working for the Salvation Army at a summer camp full of internationals and kids from Brockton, Lynn, and the South End. I quickly learned England wasn't as closed to me as I thought, when on the first day of training my roommate greeted me at the dining table with a jovial air and a particularly Georgian tongue. We were going to be counseling a cabin together for the next two months, both of us fresh from the UK.

It took some time to figure out how we were going to work together to both model and teach the life of Jesus to the rowdy bunch of ten-year-olds that filled up our cabin each week. We battled against bee stings, gashed feet, fights, and insults to demonstrate the power of respect and forgiveness. By the end of the time my English co-counselor and I were solid friends and felt confident that by the power of the Holy Spirit in us we had changed the minds of a few boys about revenge, anger, or violence. It was worthy, exhausting work. It was long days in the sun. It was summer.

In the midst of it I took time to stand kilted by a best friend while he married his beloved. It was a day full of flashing swords, flying flowers and good food that stands out as one of the sunniest, happiest days since my return home.

Back at camp I received lots beautiful letters, most of them from my sister's fountain pen. I bought lots of books, and read a few. Days and weekends off I spent in the library near the camp, and read as much high fantasy as I could fit into my head. There were indian lunch buffets and there we days when I only ate trail mix and at the end of it all I returned home, sunburned, to good friends, good beer and an annual Civil War reenactment at the local park. My English roommate came with me and called his parents in a cloud of smoke that drifted off the field onto the sidelines. 'I'm at a battle,' he shouted over the crack of musketfire. American summer, it's good to see you again.

Good to see you, good to say goodbye. Schools are beginning again, for my brothers and sisters, and the sun bleached days have passed them by. I'm still wondering how I am going to measure summer without a school calendar to let me know the fight is on and picnics are only for Saturdays. I'll have to decide for myself, and I'm deciding this way. Yesterday was summer. Today is September. The recent Life: A Technical Manual tells us that the last day of summer is September 21, but that's tom foolery. September is the fall, which means it's time for writing poems and stories, working out with my younger brother after he finishes algebra, cycling the nearby roads, and finding a good publishing job somewhere in the world. Summer, thank you for the blond in my beard.
Hello, Fall.

Caw

Wings Stretching Wider

2010-03-08T20:37:00.000-05:00

Today I finished my last tutorial in Old Norse Language and Literature. There will be no more Olafssons mounted and riding bunched together over the ridge toward Bolli's farm, with one long spear waiting to push through his shield. No more Fafnirs to be slain by underbelly ambushes. No more troublesome poets and trickster kings. Or so I could imagine if I made myself believe that the end of this day was the end of learning. Such is not the case.

As long as the fragments of a Karlamagnus saga manuscript can still be guessed at, the stories will survive, and as long as I have time and a chance to search them out, they will always be available to me. They're available to you. What I will lose is the chance to talk with an expert about whatever interests me in the text the day after I've finished reading. I was able to learn about the rights of slaves in Iceland, the equality of women and men, the way that Irish blood infused the population of the island, and the influence of Arthurian stories on the Icelandic storytellers. It has been worth the time. There is still plenty to think about, and I was able to capture quite a good reading list by recommendation and requirement. Even without the continued input of the tutor's voice, the future looks rich.

Before I endeavor further Old Norse study there are plenty of other things that will demand time and attention of me. Time, attention, focus, presence, joy, and enjoyment that I will be glad to give. This Friday I take the rental van out to the lakeside house in Wales. A couple floors of living space for myself and a dozen friends, seven days of time for baking bread, talking, the sauna, the castles, and mount Snowdon, and the offer of early morning hours without pressure and without the urban stones to block the rising sun promise some of the relief and release from deadlines that I've been waiting for. At least until I get back, when the thesis and the term paper will call for attention. Not that I plan to give it. Germany and Ireland will make sure that I don't take those papers too seriously. I'm looking forward to those times. Without them, I think I would be a little burned out at this point. Oxford full term is reaching its last few days. I would like to think the failure of my strength just at the end of term shows that they have perfected the science of academically stressing their undergraduates.

It's the end. It's the end and it's been fantastic. The tutorial system is exactly to my liking, as I had hoped and expected that it would be. The city is beautiful in its stoney glory, for all that it blocks the sun, and there's not a place that I've touched so far that I would rather be wrapped in deadlines.

Caw

From the Roost

2010-02-12T18:17:00.001-05:00

The snow might finally be melting off here, and I'll take this time to catch us up.

It's only February, and in other places I know the snow is still in the strength of its youth (I just saw a picture of my brother up to his thighs in the stuff, holding a snowshovel that is no longer taller than he is) but in some ways this has already been a long winter for me, and the warmth that is starting to creep across the lawn with the budding snowdrops is a comfort. Since December 26, when I felt content and settled in myself, things began to draw themselves out and I have been stretched, confused, wearied. Things have been hard for close friends of mine and things have been hard for me, and it hasn't always been easy to say that I've been having a good time.

Although the coolness of melancholy is true, is hanging on my shoulders a little, this isn't a sob story because really things haven't been too bad (plus, crows don't cry). The promised time in solitude between Christmas and the beginning of term came and fulfilled itself. I spent twelve days reading, writing, and cooking, walking the south coast beach overlooking the English channel, sitting in the public library and watching people go about their business, listening to the old German clock on the mantel chime through an empty house where pictures of people I may once have met smiled at each other, and singing to myself and to the people I thought I saw walking around the hallways from time to time. Words and words stacked onto the long story I'm writing. I wrote some long prayers. Very few poems. A note or two to my sister.

Coming back to Oxford was like coming home in a lot of ways. I knew all the towers, angles, and walls that I walked by from the train station to Crick road. It had snowed then, six to eight inches, and the city was buried and stayed that way, not knowing how to dig through it. I scoffed a little behind my hand, thinking of the past few years, and the past few blizzards, I've seen, but in the end I enjoyed it, and enjoyed seeing the other trudgers with me. I passed by an older man who smiled widely and, uncharacteristically for these people who seem to keep to themselves, looked joyfully into my face and said what a lovely lovely day he felt it was. I agreed, nodding.
More snow came down on top of the earlier groundfall a few days after I arrived, and there was enough for huge snowmen, snow battles, snow busts of marble museum heads and snow sculptures of our programme administrators, all made together with the new students that I was meeting. The University Parks, where I love to walk, were buried under the layers, and all the open places were covered like it was some wide tombstone pushed through by trees that were there to commemorate the ground underneath. When I decided to take some paths I had never walked before I found myself, after half an hour of crossing bridges and looking down on iced rivulets, between two farms, watching a pair of jacketed horses snorting and dancing together in the snow, blowing steam across their faces before splitting away from each other to eat again, pawing under the drifts to where the grass was still green, reminding me that winter isn't harsh here, and that the snow had fallen just before I arrived.

The new house I live in is familiar. I had visited it a number of times last term and I was ready to move into it. They put me in the tallest tower, room number one on the third floor with its window facing out over the street. My jovial roommate, a quaker named Jay from Oregon, met me at the door and we were immediate friends. Since then we've been playing music together, cooking meals for our group twice a week, and sharing our hearts and minds easily, speaking in accents. We don't know each other very well yet, but we're friends, and good ones.

After the first few weeks, when the deep snow sank into the ground and we only had powders from time to time, I was struggling to keep up with the academic work that I challenged myself with, knowing that it would be harder than last term if I followed through with my plans, and I haven't quite escaped from how far I got behind right then at the beginning. It's been down to the wire most weeks, and a lot of things have gone by the wayside. I've called my mother once (or twice), and most others not at all. I've played some board games, gone to the cinema, but never really escaped the weight of the next text waiting to be opened, the next Icelandic saga or South American short story that needs to be analysed for me to please my tutor.

It's all starting to run together. I've been sick and well. I've ridden my bicycle on solid ice and, when the roads are clear, I've taken to riding with no hands just for fun. The libraries are much the same as always, though I've been spending my time in different rooms to study my new subjects. I've made very few pub trips.
On the last one, last Wednesday, as I was walking with another student who is taking Old Norse, the last sprinkling of snow we had came down hard on us, interrupting our conversation. My friend, with his slick windbreaker, had no trouble as the big flakes bounced and slid away from him, while the brown sweatshirt I was wearing caught every one that hit and by the time we reached the door of the Turf Tavern it was covered by what seemed to be half an inch of thick snow. I shook it off and we went in, talked over stew about Scandinavian music and the stories we like, we had two ales and left, and it hasn't snowed since.

Boxing Day

2009-12-26T18:49:00.000-05:00

The first term at Oxford finished two weeks ago. I turned in the last essay. I sat in the sunlit park with a friend while we sipped milk and Bailey's, reflecting on getting into college, into Oxford, and where all the money had gone.

I visited Scotland twice. Edinburgh looks beautiful in fog, rain, and clear dawn sunlight. Romanicized ideas dissipated themselves; they must have been halfway gone when I left home.

I've had my first Christmas without my family. I've said goodbye to all the new friends (read: family) I met in September. Soon I'm off to a house where I'll retreat into isolation to rest, think, learn, and hopefully write.

They're all steps forward, I think. Steps out of the things that needed to be slowly let go. I wanted a chance to test my metal, I think I said sometime in August. I still feel pretty untested. The time passed without any great academic difficulties - enjoyable work that didn't push beyond what I've done before. My faith swam here and there in the sea of ideas, taking this and that, learning a bit from this or that person, but didn't undergo any great transformations, but I'm okay with that. I don't want to be tested anymore, I just want to live with what I have.
Living in the English culture didn't drastically shift any of the opinions I have of Americans, Europeans, or anyone else, though I think gravity may be stronger here, as everyone seems to walk with a slightly lower stride.
At the same time, I've taken steps, maybe small ones, into things I needed to slowly gain. I care more now about loving people - about making them part of my life and opening up mine to them - no matter who they are. My interests and roles are coming clear bit by bit. I want to work with kids, I want to tell stories, to bake, write, and cycle.
There haven't been any great leaps toward future plans, any great dissipation of my relationships with friends and family from home, any earth shattering tragedies that I've witnessed. Even saying that brings to mind the idea that earth shattering things have happened and are happening elsewhere, I'm just not seeing them; but then again, that's the way it's always been.

After this time I care less about places.
I have found some very beautiful, some a little shabby, some too noisy, some very comfortable. None really outstrips the others - Edinburgh sprinkled with sundown seen from Arthur's seat was majestic and kaleidoscopic, but I could only see bits of it at once and after a while it was too much, too big, and I had to climb down the slippery, muddy rocks to go back to a hotel. I couldn't stay there. The room where I am now is fifteen feet by twenty with bare walls, but the bed is comfortable, and I've spent tens of hours reading here over the past week, taking and making stories, eating small things sent to me from home. I'm done trudging around grimy urban landscapes for a while, but they have their place, and their own life. What is Florida, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, England, Scotland? They are dirt and water and what we've made them. All of them are good. All of them are a little sad.

After this time I'm glad to be myself.

Nearly There

2009-12-01T07:47:00.002-05:00

I'm just about ready to clap the dust off my hands.

Last night I finished my final tutorial essay, the meeting itself coming this Friday. Constantly wrestling out my ideas has been a lot of fun, I've enjoyed the challenge, and I'm already looking forward to my studies for next term in Old Norse and Magical Realism. Before I get too far ahead of myself, I need to remember that I do have one long essay, something of a term paper, left to complete, on the role of memory in the composition of Wordsworth and Eliot. Having given myself long enough to mull over it (I think), I'm hoping to really enjoy it.

At the same time that I've been working to finish my tutorial essays, other bits of writing have shuffled across my desk and (often worthily) distracted me. One such is 'The Laugh of the Medusa' (French 1975, English 1976) by Hélène Cixous, a strident feminist critique of lingustic, semiotic, and psychoanalytic approaches to writing (and thus to living) that have formed it into an instrument of gender oppression, driving women away from the use of language 'as violently as from their bodies'. Attacking the systems of thought that characterized woman as somehow intrinsically 'lacking' relative to man, Cixous builds a vision of the person and capacity of woman as full, rich, empowered and independent of man.
I read this in the midst of thinking through the ways that gender oppression have been perpetuated both by academics and by the basic social interactions I take part in all the time. It's in a lot of what passes for humor around the mixed tables at dinner, it's in the ideas of success and failure both for me and for the friends that I've been talking with, and it's deeply embedded in the modes of discourse that are considered 'right' or 'allowable' in academia, or at least in here. This place is incredible, but in a lot of ways the idea of it being an Old Boys Club is still deeply embedded. Even when it's not true that positions, power or roles are dominated by men (though in many cases they are), the idea remains present that women have come into them by taking on modes of discourse or approach that are somehow 'male'.
Whether Academia can actually be characterized as 'gendered', and not simply powered by people of a certain 'bent' or 'aptitude' is what I'm still working through now, complicated by the idea that certain 'bents' or 'aptitudes' are gendered, making one gender belong more than the other. Cixous was interesting in sifting through these ideas, and breaking down some of the places where the ideas that attempted to make gendered connections were absurd or ridiculous. She tears, specifically, at Freud and Lacan in the way that their constructions conflate women with negative principles, loss, evil, sin, weakness, and mystery - as if they should always be seen as something to be conquered, uncovered, penetrated or filled by the power of men.
Women and men are both human beings, as complete as human being can be. The differences of power and weakness, aptitude, capacity, and bent as well as evil, weakness, knowledge and deficiency don't lie along gender lines, but between specific people. At some point these ideas start sounds pretty trite, but then I walk into a conversation being conducted through gendered categories that are as bogus as Lacan's, and I'm reminded that they need to become perhaps less seen but more understood, less known and more lived. It is what makes Cixous' article, which by now (after more than thirty years) is well known (perhaps I'm rehashing for you?), still important for thinking through practical social interactions, even if it is already passé in academia. There are still plenty of changes that need to be made.
In working toward change, Cixous wanted to start with writing. She saw this as a good first step because she maintained that 'marked writing', that distinguished between men and women, has existed as an instrument of oppression. In her own words (note that in quoting this I am, at the same time, 'marking' it as writing different from my own. On what basis? On gender?):

Until now, far more extensively and repressively than is ever suspected or admitted, writing has been run by a libidinal and cultural - hence political, typically masculine - economy; that this is a locus where the repression of women has been perpetuated, over and over, more or less consciously, and in a manner that's frightening since it's often hidden or adorned with the mystifying charms of fiction; that this locus has grossly exaggerated all the signs of sexual opposition (and not sexual difference), where woman has never her turn to speak - this being all the more serious and unpardonable in that writing is precisely the very possibility of change, the space that can serve as a springboard for subversive thought, the precursory movement of a transformation of social and cultural structures.

Note that Cixous is not attempting to do away with 'difference' between genders, but the idea of 'opposition' between them, as if they were a dialectical pair. There is no thesis and no antithesis, she argues, but two theses, two elements of being that need to be seen for what they are, remade and reconstructed in thought and in writing so as to be rightly understood, rightly valued, and thus empowered.

I write woman: woman must write woman. And man, man... Men still have everything to say about their sexuality, and everything to write.

It will be up to man and woman to render obsolete the former relationship and all its consequences, to consider the launching of a brand-new subject, alive...

To admit that writing is precisely working (in) the inbetween, inspecting the process of the same and of the other without which nothing can live, undoing the work of death - to admit this is first to want the two, as well as both, the ensemble of the one and the other, not fixed in sequences of struggle and expulsion or some other form of death but infinitely dynamized by an incessant process of exchange from one subject to another.

Amen, Cixous.

Caw

Social Satire and Old English Riddles

2009-11-25T19:39:00.000-05:00

I'm composing poetry nearly every day, and I like it very much indeed.

One of my long term goals, to be able to compose (however badly) in Old English has been achieved. My last three translation assignments are complete, passages from The Dream of the Rood and Beowulf, leaving me with only my writing projects to finish - three grammatical commentaries and two Old English poems. The first of the two, a riddle poem in the tradition of the Anglo-Saxon Exeter Book, is already complete in draft form, my tutor puzzling over it now (hopefully due more to its nature as a riddle than to its many splintered sentences and poor construction), while the second, of yet to be determined focus, will be due to her next week.
The Anglo-Saxon riddle poems generally centered on physical objects, narrating a story in which the primary element was revealed by its attributes and actions. A coat of mail is described as something harvested from the cold earth, woven but not fabric, a friend to men in battle.
A modern English translation of my riddle in below. It includes a few elements left out of the Old English version, while the opposite is also true.

Riddle I:

This friend is wrapping around my mouth.

Hiding in the air like my breath, which it takes,

Laughing in my hair until I shower.

It has been given houses by hungry men.

It goes with every fire, cooks fish,

sleeps in cheese, sometimes wrinkles mothers,

and comforts me. It is in cigars, in tea.

My poetic composition class has challenged me in further ways. The feedback my tutor gives is usually very good, often entertaining, and nearly always asks me to do something I haven't put much work into before (he somehow has a knack for noting what I lack in my background - smart man, good guide). The most recent assignment was to write fifteen heroic couplets of social satire. I have endeavored neither of these at any great length or with much appreciable success.

Nevertheless I set about it with a will, but failed to find any subject that would carry itself forward as meaningful satire for more than a few lines until finally, one evening at supper surrounded by my friends, I encountered a tale of woe that was met not with sympathy but derision from those who heard. A young man, a friend of mine, had suffered the loss of his computer do to a failure in the logic board. His computer was an Apple Macbook. Those around him, faithful supporters of the Windows Empire, laughed in derision. Thus was the stage set, thus the story began.

The result, which is still growing, exceeded fifteen couplets long ago. The tale of the Apple user's failing Macbook will not reduplicate content with form in death, so I follow it along, wondering what will become of it. Read now a small excerpt from the introduction:

...The sands of time, compressed and melted small,

enthroned by men and holding them in thrall,

are laid in strips and wrapped around with wire,

here silicate, there layer of sapphire.

These element’ry powers thus enshrined

in angled forms and plastic plates confined

take as their name the function they fulfill,

‘Computers’ called by all who trust their skill.

Hark now, oh reader, thinking this mundane

do not discard my song as sung in vain

but listen to a tale of wildest woe,

of one who trusted what he did not know...

The style attempted is Alexander Pope's, one which, as T.S. Eliot noted, threatens to make a fool of any who attempts it without the talent of the Neo-Classical master. I fear myself a fool, but assignments are what they are, may life go on.

Further creative output has come in the form of dramatic dialogue written to request a personal meeting with an Oxford professor. A friend and I, impressed by the lecturer who gave a series on Oscar Wilde for the first five weeks of term, decided to request a meeting to ply her with questions as she had invited in closing the series. In not wanting to have our desires swiftly passed over we landed on the idea of writing out our hopes in dramatic dialogue form. We worked independently (save for some editing), but finally came together last night and sent our e-mails, with similar diction, at the same instant. After waiting in anxiety for a reply (feeling foolish for thinking this lecturer, engaging as she was, might not be willing to indulge our whimsy), we received this afternoon an e-mail saying how tickled she was at our work and that she would be willing to meet with us sometime soon. We were quite excited.

This will come as one in a string of incredible meetings that I've had over the past few weeks with people interested in bringing me alongside them in their work. The most encouraging and exciting of them thus far was a trip this past Tuesday to the UK training base for the Society of International Linguistics, a.k.a. Wycliffe Bible Translators. Worked out by a set of chance conversations between other people (wherein Mia, a friend in my program, crashed on her bicycle, was helped by a friendly family, took their invitation to visit their church service, and sat in the pew next to the Director of the Wycliffe center who blurted out his position to his own surprise just at a time when my friend was asking God to give her some direction toward the mission field) the visit landed on a day when my schedule was miraculously empty.
Mia and I were treated to a day of worship, prayer, and encouragement from linguists and teachers that have traveled throughout the world. The questions that we came with were sharpened throughout the day and both of us returned home with renewed focus (while, at the same time, having a lot of new ideas to think through), having made a few friends and escaped our academic studies for a short time.

All of this runs concurrent with my renewed love for studying my bible. I've starting reading Isaiah and Romans again, while pressing on with my continual journey through the Psalms, and I'm always finding the words so beautiful, complex, and mystifying that I'm never really satisfied with only the few chapters I fit into my mornings. I've been sharing that with other people too, and it's making me more and more thankful for the time, place and people that I have here. A thankfulness that I'm looking forward to expressing at our upcoming Thanksgiving celebration. It will be this Saturday. It will be excellent.

Caw

Stratford and Friends

2009-11-09T10:33:00.000-05:00

After a punishing seventeen grammar sheets, a long translation of a story from Bede's Ecclesiastical History, a shorter translation of a riddle from the Exeter Book, a commentary on each translation, and the final submission of a proposal for my term paper (whew!), I took a Saturday train into Stratford-upon-Avon with four friends.

We began before the sun, scrambling a breakfast before trudging down Headington hill into Oxford to board the train. At the second station we reached the sun was splashing down on the platform, cutting out caves of shadows under the awnings. When we reached Stratford at 9:30 the sun was already as strong as it would be.

Our first goal was the Royal Shakespeare Company across town from the depot. On the way we passed a farmer's market that we would return to for lunch.

We made it to the box office in time to get tickets to Twelfth Night, showing at 1:30, so for the next three hours we scouted the city; walking the Avon river, exploring between the homes of Shakespeare's family, eating fresh cheese, olive bread, and roast pork from the market. Delicious.

We took our time in the Nash garden; arranged beds of flowers and shrubs circled by statues evoking plays of Shakespeare, including stern Roman senators, disgruntled sorcerers, and twisting wood nymphs. The sun, shooting in at a low angle, reminded us that we are much further north here than we are used to, pushing black shadows into all the crannies and crevices of carved beards. The glowering brass figures and our discussions of the various spirits embodied in each play set the stage for the coming show. Making our way to the theater just before the play began we were greeted by a steam draped wooden stage that dropped the story into a properly Eastern Mediterranean setting. The next two hours were a whirl of brilliant storytelling, and we all came out with questions and puzzled reactions; signs, perhaps, of a good production.

As the sun set we made our way to the grounds of the Cathedral where Shakespeare is buried, then moved to the banks of the Avon to watch the white smudges of swans patter across the water before finally heading back into town to gather around a table in an Indian restaurant and share bowls of hot and savory sauces with rice and naan. Service was good, friends were good, and it was the prefect way to finish the day.

The train home was subdued, all of us feeling a satisfied weariness but still enjoying each others' company; sketching, writing, talking, and finally praying together before trudging back up the hill from the Oxford station.

This was a great rest after the work of the week, and has been followed by a couple more mellow days of steady studying and relaxing with friends.

Crazytown!

2009-10-31T21:53:00.000-04:00

Well, friends, I've been free for a week now.

Free, that is, from quarantine. After effects from Swine Flu have lasted a little longer.

What I mean is this: it's not good to fall behind here in Oxford. Additionally, it's not good to not care.

Sunday morning I'm released from the cell. All is light and airy, the world is wide and waiting for my foot to press it again. Knowing, however, that I had indeed fallen quite behind, and was facing two weeks worth of work, I spent the day, from 10am to 6pm, reading and writing, hunched over the desk in the bedroom to which I was glad to finally have returned. Write a paper? Pounded it out. Done in five hours. Translate passages from the Old English? Did that too. Got it all done.

Or so I thought.

The fantasy I created for myself centered primarily on the idea that the work I had done on Sunday was the sum total of the assignments I had been required to complete for the week. Feeling completely free, I spent the next two days at pubs, concerts, ice cream shops, and on the sunlit steps of famous libraries, basking in the afternoon light with friends. The sun was warm and friends were kind.

Reality was not so gentle.

Tuesday night, Wednesday morning, night morningnight - blended together into a rush of scanning texts, compiling bibliographies, inflecting adjectives, expounding methodologies... and on and on. I slept some, I'm sure. I remember cooking dinner on Wednesday night. But the image burned into my memory is of sheets and sheets of grammar exercise spread out over my desk.

This seems to be the same sort of predicament I got myself into a month ago (cf. 'write write write' below). Perhaps the methodology I really should analyse more closely is the one I use for 'living'.

Swine

2009-10-22T12:46:00.001-04:00

When, on Tuesday, I couldn't muster up the energy to open the book lying on the library desk in front of me, I knew that something was wrong, and I was pretty sure that something was Swine Flu. Wes, of bottom-bunk-under-Carl fame, had gone into quarantine Sunday afternoon, and the other three of us in the room knew it was only a matter of time. We had all made our bets about who would be next. Unfortunately, that my case was the strongest was proven by virulent onset Tuesday morning.

The trip back from the library took all the energy that I had left. By the time I walked in the door I was exhausted, and dropped into the first foyer chair without a second thought, feeling like I'd swallowed molten metal. After consultation with the health and safety officer and with the help of my junior dean I was shipped into confinement in 'Vines A5', the old cook's quarters on the ground floor. Two days hence, and here I remain.

My cellmate, dead before I arrived.

By the second night the windows were looking more and more like prison bars.

Under the influence of the dread disease I suffered a terrible lethargy. Things were cast about my quarters without rhyme or reason and I did not possess the strength of will to straighten them.

Yesterday my anti-viral dispensation finally arrived from the chemist. I woke this morning somewhat refreshed, and now have hope that within the next day my mind will be restored and I will once again be able to apply myself to learning and leisure at full capacity, regardless of when I am finally released back into the world.

Picture

2009-10-14T03:54:00.001-04:00

A huge man, his body hung with battle gear, leans out over the water on the ship's railing as the full wooden bulk slows. His right hand rests on the haunch of a snarling wooden dragon, the prow that is still flecked with foam from the race through ocean breakers. His left is wrapped around a stout rope, and his eyes are eager for the approaching sand. A smiles slowly grows above his beard until, with a shout, he launches his frame from the rail, swings out over the water, and lets go. His massive legs, boot wrapped, splash down into the surf to the rattle of metal on metal, his slung shield and open hauberk singing out the landing together.
Waves wash the coastal pebbles with salt, giving them a sheen that reflects the approaching figure until he towers above them, shading them from the sun. Standing on the strand he surveys the shore before him where he is framed by further warriors at this back, by the ship on the tide, and finally by the sea and sky.

- -

This is Beowulf essay week. The landing of the Geats on the Danish coast is always one of my favorite moments. As the warriors make the beach there's a "clash of mail and a thresh of gear" that runs right up my spine. It's incredible.
Treasure is the topic of my essay, a subject that has resurfaced in its importance with the discovery this summer of the Staffordshire Hoard. The historians in my lectures are talking about it, my tutor is talking about it. Ever since I found out a few weeks back, I've been talking about it. I feel a bit like the gold-obsessed Anglo-Saxon warriors of the poem in my tizzy over the collection. But that's okay, it's over fifteen hundred works of ancient treasure!

The imaginary adventures aren't the only ones I'm having.
Last week, before full term launched with its new schedule crowded with lectures I want to attend and essay assignments to complete, I had a chance to go up to Cumbria with a dozen students from the program. We wandered a few of the lakes, visited sites of literary interest (does 'Grasmere' bring anything to mind?) and had a chance to relax with some good food and constant cups of tea.
Since then it's been a scramble of scheduling and research, figuring out clubs and societies to join, times to fit in the necessary writing, and stopping myself from eating the whole world (it's hard when everything here tastes so good!).

Caw
- -
Addendum

From the Scriptures today:

'I rejoice at your word,
As one who finds great spoil.'
- Psalm 119:162

The Word of God is greater than a hoard of gold.

- -
Addendum the Second

I got to use the phrase "demon battles" in an academic paper. I'm delighted.

Write Write Write

2009-09-29T13:11:00.000-04:00

This past week has been the first big crackdown on my lack of discipline.

That means that on weekdays and weekends both I was crouched over a desk in the Bodleian scribbling frantic notes on my college-ruled in the afternoon, or keeping my swollen eyelids open in front of my computer well after midnight. Since Tuesday last week there hasn't been less than eight books on the desk beside my bed when I'm huddled under the light to read, and I haven't cleaned my laundry, made a run for groceries, or (oops) replaced the long gone bar of shower soap. There certainly hasn't been any pubbing, dancing, or touring since I landed in this mindset somewhere between penance for past mistakes and insane desperation to rise victorious over the next due date, but that's not to say it's been all bad.

Friday afternoon I finally had my first Oxford meat pie. Served tower style, with a mound of mashed potatoes underneath and a pile of mashed peas on top, the ale stewed steak and carrots wrapped together with stilton cheese inside a butter-brown crust were just what I had been hoping for. I enjoyed myself so much that, naturally, I had a second yesterday (though this time I chose the spiced pork), and followed it up with some of the famous 'Ben's Cookies' that had been recommended to me as "Better than any grandma's". They were good, I'll give them that.

Between the pies was another spot of fun that has been long awaited. Sunday afternoon I finally played my first pickup game of ultimate. Short field, three on three, late afternoon. It was a great interlude between reading Scottish history texts and sitting back down to write on them.

And that last sentence emphasizes for me what makes all the studying worthwhile: I'm doing what I love. I love to write. I love scratching my pencil over the white paper, disregarding the blue stripes that are supposed to keep me straight. I love losing awareness of my fingers as an idea strikes and they fly faster and faster while the words that I hope will capture some part of my observation and imagination pop onto the screen. Even more, the topics I've had so far - Anglo-Saxon England, the Scottish Highlands, and now the linguistic theory of George Orwell - are things that I've thought about for years, and gotten hours of pleasure from even before I had this chance to grapple with them through scholarly opinions and critical analyses.

So it is that, after having written this, I now return to further writing. After composition comes editing, polishing, perfecting.

Caw

Recent Adventure

2009-09-22T09:17:00.000-04:00

This past Sunday afternoon we roostmates decided, despite our looming papers, to be a little touristy and take part in an Oxford tradition.

Wes, who bunks below me, recorded our experience for the pleasures of all:

Sunday Afternoon Punting

Caw

Settling

2009-09-21T18:55:00.000-04:00

I'm finally becoming an Oxford student, or so I hear. The true heart of the University study, the one on one tutorials with professors, won't begin for another month, but I've slowly been checking off the items on my to do list.

I've spent hours reading in the "Crown Jewel" of the city, the Bodleian Library. This is the one place where I've never had to request an interlibrary loan. Everything is here. If it's been published in England in the last four hundred years, it's held in the underground stacks waiting for my next reading whim. With such a rich store at my fingertips I haven't been able to restrain myself, and have done a little reading beyond my class assignments. When I can choose any book in the English language, how could I not take an afternoon here and there to indulge myself? Something I've never read by C.S. Lewis? Yes, please. A book detailing the major works of Scottish fantasy literature? Why yes, I think I will.

This past week I made the first of the many pilgrimages I've planned to the graves of great authors. This, the grave of Charles Williams, is just off my usual path into the city, and the cemetery is quite peaceful. I had a chance to take my time in the yard, so I did some writing and thinking before going on my way. The winding walks through cow pastures and along the walls of country estates have the sort of beauty that I was hoping for, so exploring is one of my favorite pastimes.

I located a delicious looking pie shop in the local covered market. One of my favorite things over the past five years has been the British meat pies that I've been able to find from time to time while at home. Now that I'm here, one of my priorities has been finding a good pieman. I suppose this one is only halfway checked off, as I've located the baker but have yet to try a pie there. Wednesday is the last time that lunch will be provided for us, so I'm planning to finally give one a try. Though from what I saw when I was standing at the shop window gazing longingly at the golden pastries, I'm sure they'll be delicious.

And finally, I've finished my first academic paper for my overview of British history. I admit I had to squeak through a little rust, but the final product wasn't entirely deplorable so I have great hopes that I'll enjoy the challenge to my abilities this year and be able to turn out some good pieces. If I can muster up as much fervor for my academic reading as I have for the time I've spent reading for pleasure I'm sure I won't have any trouble as far as source material goes, but lacking fervor I will trust to diligence and count the rest beyond my power.

Prayers for you all, as for the whole body of Christ.

Pax Christi.

Battle of Tours

2009-09-12T06:10:00.000-04:00

Classes have begun, in all their glory.

Thursday this week was a trip out into the country to begin absorbing the history from the land itself. Our first stop was Salisbury cathedral, the tallest in Britain and full of stories. Besides exploring the nave and the surrounding buildings (chapter house, cloisters etc.) our groups were scheduled for tower tours that took us up to the cathedral spire. As I put one foot above the other I was saying to myself, "I'm climbing the spire of a cathedral in England, I'm climbing the spire of a cathedral in England!" I couldn't believe it. On coming down, I made my way to the display case where one of the four original copies of the Magna Carta is displayed. Seeing the single parchment covered in tight script and knowing the impact that it had on the nation made that moment shockingly powerful.

The "Moses Window"

The mediaeval frame inside of the spire

The view over Salisbury from the top

One of the most curious aspects of the Cathedral.

Apparently, only headless horsemen/women and the

disabled may use the toilets. I had to go, so I had to sneak in.

Our next visit was equally incredible to me: Old Sarum - an ancient Celtic hill fort. Hill fort construction is simple, yet incredibly defensible, and as we explored the mounds and ramparts I imaged the ancient celtic stone-age warriors building it with their sons, and then their grandsons taking it over (it probably would have taken a couple of generations to complete). Later on in history the Romans built a camp on it, then the Anglo-Saxons minted coins there, and Norman castle built on the land, the ruins of which are still there today. I've been waiting for this all my life. It's the culmination of all the playmobile games I played at three, four and five. I'm here where this is real, and it's incredible. There are even more awe inspiring (i.e. still standing) castles to come as I do a little more traveling. I can't wait.

The motte of the Norman bailey

The moat. I can't tell you how many

childhood dreams were fulfilled in

the instant that I laid eyes on this.

Finally, we reached Stonehenge, and here's the deal: I didn't really care. It's strange for me to say - but I feel like the only real thing that I can take away from having been at Stonehenge is that I can say I have been there, i.e. bragging rights, i.e. I can stoke my ego if I want to. That's kind of lame. There was a certain interest in how old it is, and the sort of effort that went into making it, but most of my awe in that direction was used up the day before when we were actually learning about it in class. When I was actually there we weren't allowed to go anywhere close to it, and so it just kind of looked small, like some old rocks, and not quite as inspiring as I imagined. Oh well. Anglican Cathedrals and Celtic/Norman castles are more my kind of thing.

It's kind of cool, but even these photos lie.

It's surrounded by a cordon and there were

tourists (like me) everywhere. Not very cool.

So - things is going well. Britain is a cool place. I'm glad to be here.

Out, Charles Martel

On the Perch

2009-09-06T04:08:00.000-04:00

The idyllic scene from the airplane window couldn't have been closer to the stereotype of English countryside. The patchwork of fields and low green hedges under the clouds I was still within was my first true glimpse of England. It wasn't mediated by camera angle or abstracted by a writer's constructions. What a startling moment. It took me a few blinks to accept that what I saw wasn't some sort of invention.

The true image of this place is still being filled in. A couple nights in a country house, my new home, with thirty-nine other American students has made sure that it's going to be a shared experience. Most of my time in the "grand home," as it's called in the program description, has been with four or five new faces. Meeting everyone over the past few days has been exciting, but it's strange to have so many people with a very similar overall focus in the same place. Even with the differences of personality between each of us there is a greater homogeneity here than I've experienced elsewhere. Over the next few months I'm sure that both the positive and negative aspects of this solidarity will become more clear to me. My prayer is that it lends itself to a cohesion and brotherhood (sisterhood, yeah yeah) between us.

Last night was my first English pub visit, something that I've been anticipating for a while. I quite enjoyed it, and ended up staying for about four hours, as I bounced between the different groups of people from our program that just seemed to appear one after the other. Apparently the Eagle and Child has some sort of significance for college age christian students.

Today, my first English mass. I'm going with a few of my roommates (there are four of us) and an aspiring monk. I'm looking forward to the service (not to mention the pub after). I'm not sure how long it's going to take me to find a church that I'm really going to want to stay with, and on what grounds I'm going to make that decision, but for starters I'm going to follow some others and make it a communal experience. Good time with these people may be a bit hard to come by once studies start, so I'm going to steal as much time as I can with these people before then. They are my "family" for the next few months, after all.

Five more days...

2009-08-29T13:14:00.000-04:00

and I feel ready to go.

Not that I'm packed, because I'm not. Not because I finished all the projects that I'm working on for my dad, for myself, or for my friends. Not, finally, because I can't wait to leave all these people that I love behind.

No, I feel ready because, despite the details that need to be worked out and the things that still have to be done, I've been working toward this for the last two years and it's finally here. The readiness I feel comes out of the deep well of preparation that I've been pouring into mentally and academically, personally, and spiritually. It feels full. It feels ready to be drawn.

I've been building a vision for myself, of myself, that I'm going to have a chance to test against unexpected things. I want to pursue my writing, that is going to be tested. I want to work with kids, making progress in that will be a good challenge. I want to join with and learn from a church family, and for the first time it will be outside of my own cultural context. These are the things that I feel ready for.

Of course there are plenty of things that I haven't thought through, prepared against, or expected, but that's going to be part of the fun of it. That's part of the purpose of doing something new.