POEM: A Rushing in the Ears Unto Death

A Rushing in the Ears Unto Death

Susurrus, you fleeting glimpse of dashing ear with salty shake
a sliver of caress and yes. You sideswipe my sense of sound
like the Doppler of a siren passing—pitch inflecting ambulance
grief with more urgency than that rushing blare implies while still.

 The tintinnabulation of my grandmother’s chimes intertwined
with my impression of regeneration, spring injecting itself
through every shoot and tree. The way the soul shakes staring
skyward at night beside a lake in the woods, no sirens here,

Just stand and gape at a growing confluence of galactic smears
propinquity to the moon on a vast enough scale, footsteps away
if you close your eyes and stride with a faith like a child knows
the swing will cradle their oscillations and will not buckle

As a cracked and leaking hope—the agonous combatants wield
their sticks and race from teeter-totter to jungle gym, how soft
and impermanent we are, how fragile—yet so warlike, the young soldiers shriek.
The brontide of our souls crashing from dream to sleep to death,

It envelops our final breath, that roar, until at last our view is washed clean.

1/26/12

POEM: The Interconnected Rages

The Interconnected Rages 

My anger sketches out the landscape
an architect of scratchy twigs and jagged lines
(I feel something deeper than need and thus
unnameable) insistence I have a big thing to say.
To winter even the least of my worries—insurmountable.

Slicker than a seal looks, oily,
black like crude-soaked down.

My weeping robs its tears from famine victims
whose breaths billow a tornado.

We thus destroy each other 
with sighs whose wrath could split the lightning,
shocking more than a downed power line 
through the limp then stiff then limp again 
form of a blackened infant.

12/28/2011

Songs about hope

"And when the night is cloudy, there is still a light that shines on me. Shine until tomorrow, let it be."

So I just walked through hell. Really.
It's been a long couple months.

I feel like I'm coming out the other side of a truly horrid ordeal, well it's not that I feel that way so much as that's the way it really is. And it is pretty glorious to be able to sit here and listen to "Here Comes the Sun" and "Let It Be" and not feel cynical about it at all.

You know it's a pretty horrific ordeal when it turns an atheist into some semblance of a believer--and please don't think I mean "Christian."

What I mean is I believe there to be a higher force in this universe that had a hand in my being able to keep breathing--and that's pretty cool.

So...yeah. No smart-ass sign-off line, no hip bullshit. I'm just fucking glad to be alive.

I miss Keith. But I can't keep letting his death kill me. Cuz that's where I was heading.

Love you everyone,

Rosswell

Insane Dream

I got shot last night. Well, in a dream I got shot. It was madness, I tell ya, MADNESS!

The strangest thing was that after the shooting (in the belly with a 10 gauge, apparently, although the person who did it used a pistol. I saw the surveillance footage on the news from my hospital bed. How they managed to hit me straight on in the belly while shooting at our car from the driver's side is anyone's guess) I went through the whole process of going to the hospital, having surgery, coming out of anesthesia, and somehow learned all of the following:

The five people involved in attempting to kill Ashley Van Driesche, someone else in the backseat, and myself were so comically inept as to tag their names all over my presumably soon-to-be dead body. The girl who actually pulled the trigger (a minor who was forced into the role of reaper by the four adults in the car because she would only do a few years) left a strangely heartfelt note about how I was going to get better and have a great life...well, she left that note on my left arm. Additionally, there was a note (also on my arm. This was all on my left arm.) indicating that the author hoped I would die. And he called me a bastard. Charming.

Now. Why did they do it? Well, apparently they were not impressed by the cat emblem on the specially-ordered license plate of our car. I guess they thought it was a little "too gay." Words were exchanged, tempers flared, I took a slug in the belly. So thanks a lot, Ashley. If you hadn't ordered that "Cat Lover For Life!" license plate, I wouldn't have been shot.

At the hospital, I walked in on my own...I think I walked in on my own. I had no recollection of what had transpired, I was in a ridiculous amount of pain, and I was going all crazy diva soap-opera-star-having-her-big-daytime-Emmy-scene. Well, it was perhaps slightly less dramatic than some of my actual hospital visits, but it was pretty pathetic. After a bit, they started giving me shots. I would ask what they were giving me and they would name drugs that didn't exist. At some point they realized that the drugs weren't getting into me due to the fact that my abdominal cavity was flooding with precious blood from a nicked artery (fancy that, shot in the guts and I got a "nicked artery") (which, yeah, I know it doesn't make a lot of sense but it's a dream so just go with it) and the nurse shoves the IV tube into a hole in my gut (presumably not the bullet wound) and suction, suction, suction.

We were somewhere around O.R., in the center of the hospital, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like, "I have a high tolerance. You should give me more."

I went under. I woke up. It was the social event of the season in that waiting room. Everyone who's anyone (at least in my life) was in that waiting room. I valiantly trudged out of the recovery room and swore my revenge.

Flash forward: I have insisted that charges be dropped. I have informed the police that I'll be killing those sons'a'bitches myself. It seems the police in dreamland are more inclined to allow a vigilante a bit of leeway. I moved into a house with a trusty sidekick (we were both pathetically addicted to the narcotics prescribed to combat our now-undeniable agony, but not in junky way, more like in a rugged, handsome, "watch as I bravely slog my way through misery and suffering to exact my righteous revenge on the monsters who wronged me and I may need some chemical assistance along the way" kind of way) and began to carry out...some sort of...wait. Why aren't these bastards dying?!

Things got more and more confused after that. It seems I was not actually this Timothy-Olyphant-the-star-of-Justified-out-for-revenge guy all the time. No, this was more of a United States of Tara sort of scenario...well, not really. I'll explain. It seems I had this wife (never saw her, this was all in voice-over) who needed a really supportive husband. A really supportive husband. One who would invent a scenario where he was shot by a roving gang of psychotic youth and subsequently spent years developing a heavy narcotics addiction while tracking the perpetrators purely to (I guess) give her life some spice. In the next episode, I still looked like Timothy Olyphant, only dressed up all metrosexual.

That's right. The last several minutes (in dreamtime) consisted of a preview for the next episode of "Ross acts like a psycho to keep his dream wife amused (since dream-Ross is apparently not gay)" and it made no sense whatsoever. And in a way the whole thing made sense.

Isn't it strange how that works? I'm only scratching the surface of how much stuff happened in this dream.

I hope when we die it's like dreaming forever.

Love,
Ross

This morning felt like a Disney cartoon.

Produced by sweatshop workers, that is. Just joking.

This morning was beautiful. It is sunny and wavering on the edge of warm, just cool enough to feel like a softer version of brisk. I walked to Anna Bananna's (and yes, that is how it's spelled--local coffee shop, wonderfulness) and got their signature drink, a chocolate and banana latte. I also purchased a marionberry muffin and watched Nadal v. Monfils on their TV while reading Harper's. It was pretentiously delicious.

As I was walking back to the house, the doughnut shop nearby was hosting a church car wash 'n' wax--a man and a teenage boy were waxing a gorgeous, cherry-red Mustang. All the trees are blossoming, there's pollen in the air. I stopped smoking four days ago (on day 5) and I can smell the flowers. I said, "That's a beauty-ful car." The man said, "Well, thank you, sir!" We may as well have tipped our top-hats at one another.

And twirled our waxed mustaches.

Then, a pit bull puppy (probably about six months) on a leash tied to a traffic sign came trotting up to me, tail all a-wag, and hopped up, placing his paws on my thighs. I scratched his head and chuckled, almost tearing up over how amazing existence can feel.

I can't really explain it. I guess, as the commercial says, "Cymbalta can help." For a while there I took everyone's advice and avoided antidepressants like the plague. It turns out that I may have found the right one for the first time in my life. No side effects. No wiry, manic feeling. It's not really helping with my pain issues, but those are caused by actual physical problems more so than by depression.

In related news, I met with an orthopedist yesterday. Surgery's the word, kids.

I'll keep you updated--I have neglected this blog for far too long.

The world is not a cold dead place.
We are not yet the lost.
Despite calamity come and gone,
a light--oh, yes--a light remains.

Love and kisses and babbling baboons,
Ross

2:22 a.m.

Let the dream symbolize nothing but itself
All the symbols gutted and hollow and done
In the dream we were reduced to windblown ash
All tomorrows canceled, all promises voided

All we'd meant to do reduced to pawn tickets tacked to the wall
The I-meant-to way of unpaid debts
And those tickets are ash, what's hawked is gone
And so are we.

In the dream I saw buildings like haphazard dominoes
thrust into clay and baked for too long
and the world was on fire,
and it stood for nothing. The dream stood for itself.

*

Armistice declared, syringes capped.
God's stepped out for a smoke
And with that cat away, the mice will pay.

*

Someone must be tending the light at the end of the tunnel.


"Hi."
-Ross

Let me be your everlasting light.

"Let me be your everlasting light
A train going away from pain
Love is the coal
That makes this train roll
Let me be your everlasting light"
                The Black Keys - "Everlasting Light"

A playlist I'm currently enjoying the hell out of...erm...um..."a playlist out of which I am currently enjoying the Hell"(???):

1. The Black Keys - Everlasting Light
2. The White Stripes - Black Math
3. Vampire Weekend - Holiday
4. The Unicorns - Jellybones
5. TV On The Radio - I Was A Lover
6. The New Pornographers - The Slow Descent Into Alcoholism
7. Modest Mouse - Heart Cooks Brain
8. My Morning Jacket - Off the Record
9. Panda Bear - Bros
10. Titus Andronicus - My Time Outside the Womb
11. Wolf Parade - Grounds For Divorce
12. Against Me! - Walking Is Still Honest
13. Liars - The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack

*

Man...let me be your everlasting light. I am awfully happy to be alive right now. Got some sunshine today. Has been a good week all the way around. Back hurting less. Watching Murray v. Ferrer in Australian Open semis. Murray was playing like shit for a while there but he's come around at this point.

This is a good thing.

Have written little bits of poetry here and there lately. Wanna read some? No? Okay, here it is anyhow:


Trudge through the downpour or
Skip through the shower -
The view is up to you.
Whether the glass is
Half-empty/Half-full
The point is to see
There's a glass there at all.

A light yet remains,
We are not yet the doomed.

To find holy beauty in
one simple kiss. To see
I am not yet consigned to the grave.
To think how I could have been
dead long ago--yet life's but a dream
So onward I row.

*

Sitting backwards on the train
the sights retreating from me
Last night dreamt
excessive injections
So waking was the track on which
I fled those bitter longings

*

There's a sign outside of a church in North Portland that currently reads, "Trouble with infertility?" followed by information on an upcoming lecture for couples. This served as a catalyst for a wonderful short story idea.

However, it just occurred to me that rather than tell you about the idea for the story...I'm just gonna write the damn story. Good thinking, no?

Hope all is well with you, whoever you are.

Rosswell