This Is Not a Post Concerning the New Year

I guess I just wanted to post something concerning writing. Like real writing, not this. I'm in a graduate class for poetry this semester, and I've been told part of the focus is publishing. So that's cool. I don't have an grand illusions of getting anything put in a magazine, at this point I'm trying not to think about writing in that way. The stupid day dream I use to have where I was an influential writer with a nice scarf and valid opinions is the thing I'm trying to rid myself of.....I think I write better when that's not what I'm thinking about. Anyways I've been working on something new poems over the last few days. I'm mostly just building from notes I took last semester, anyways I figured I'd give the people that read this a preview.

Marriage at Sea Level & the End of the World

The gossip of old lades moves through our homes
and lets us know that every choice we've made has been wrong,
and no matter who we love she'll always be two songs
with the same words and different music to make us burn
like silly 2 dollar candles bought from a street vendor
(pouring out cinnamon or vanilla till there's nothing else in the room).

When my grandfather died his ashes married Horse Mtn
& a flask of whiskey while my grandmother married her Garden
and now everything blooms when the spring melts the fog away.

Every morning after Thanksgiving my father's friend
marries the same waitress at Hanson's truck stop,
5 am over eggs & toast.

The groaning of the Pacific sounds like a wounded animal
in the pastures behind Three Corners Market
where the salt marries rusted out tractors and homes.

The gas station attendant in Ludlow who hoses the
concrete at night wants to get married while I'm trying to
show you a constellation that looks like marriage at sea level & the End of the World. Because
now the world is ending and when we wake up
we won't know the faces of the people around us.

I never trust anyone as much as strangers and few people
can sing in my heart like the nameless.
The longer I go into the night the less I want to talk to you
or anyone who might be real because I never want your
silences to change my landscapes or
rot my hatred into something useful.

We change our bodies everyday to look
like thicker versions of our parents
and take a bow to the people we use to be
(who look back at us like faces against the window of a car
when it's cold and normal saying, "Good Job, We're So Proud!)
as we stand in Levis, hands jammed in our pockets, ashamed.

Every time I see a full moon I want to walk with you in a Eucalyptus
grove till all of our features are worn away and
I find the dark timid feeling of honesty
that swims around in the creek by the path
like the fish trapped in pools
who wait for rain to take them back out to the ocean.
Winter comes and I drive through the desert and up the coast
till the weather feels like home.
You are still at work so I wait.



Sooo yeah, there's that. silly rants and raves.

Hope everyone is doing well,

Geoff