May 2013
7 posts
THE THIRST OF ONE
There was a lot to wake up to. A lot of feeling and mess and pain and pleasure and love and loss. The room felt scared, as if it were alive and had reason to fear what the morning was holding. Or maybe it was the dryness of the place where she slept—the cold electricity of a space without water, and a charged sense of worry, hovering like low clouds in the sky, for the moment her fingers might...
It’s not faith, if we’re just desperate to believe. And it can’t be love, if the catalyst is need. And where am I supposed to be when nothing is around me… when nothing seems to breed. And what about the promise… the peace that comes from knowledge or the power of some entity? I’ve only ever seen it leave with the heat. And after all this time my greatest deficiency is sleep.
I contemplated leaving the beach for the day to do some sight-seeing on my own. Our time together was floundering and any hope that we previously had of salvaging the relationship, departed into the sea upon arrival.
It was clear to both of us … it had been clear, for a while. We were much too young when we found each other and, by the time we grew up, we were much too angry to forgive...
MY FATHER, THE CHARMER: PART I
After, literally, years of pursuing her and only ever getting “no” to his requests for a date, my dad climbed into the backseat of my mom’s car one day, and hid there until she got off of work. My mom finally finished for the day, walked out to her car, only to find this complete goofball in the back, and was told that he would not be getting out of the car until they “had a talk.”
After...
April 2013
7 posts
A FEAR OF HEIGHTS
One day, on top of a high cliff, I learned many things about being afraid.
The water was quiet and the cove was green and still. The voices of others crawled across the lake to our side of the island, but, by the time they reached our ears, had lost their shout. We only heard whispers and echoes of their celebrations— the sounds of joy, hushed, but no less infectious. It was a beautiful...
A LOSS OF MANY THINGS
I sat with a young mother in the afternoon. She was my young mother and I was her very young daughter. We played with sticks and flower-stems on the front porch steps and talked about the clouds and what they looked like. They were grey and heavy and it was going to rain soon. I saw one hanging over the highway. I told my mother that it looked like two hands clenched together … like hands...
We’ve grown into ugly things… like fused roots, confused, and unsure of what to breed. The water here is dirty, but our mouths are dry and thirsting. We need new seeds and a safe terrain. The pressure of clean hands against the grain. The transfusion of veins. A new landscape and the courage to stay. Let that old ground become a grave. Let this new home be a place to...
There was a morning, not very long ago, when she felt something that she couldn’t define. It was important and clanging, like the beat of cymbals across symphonic lines. Constant and reminding of the paths she had tried. And the trees were breaking in the garden. She imagined herself rising up over the white desk she sat behind, opposing winds battling, creating pockets of gravity...
The sea is certain.
March 2013
7 posts
CHEMISTRY
The development of a human is like the formation of different substances in a science lab. You have all of these different elements in front of you and, depending on how you combine them, will end up with a different reaction each time.
In life, these different elements are chalked up to an innumerable amount of circumstances. Childhood experiences, losses, hurts, betrayals, absences, deaths,...
THE UNAVOIDABLE
I am starting to realize how broken love is. Not love itself … but the idea and expectations we have of it. Not accurate ideas or expectations … but ones that we have been given by other people and experiences. The idea that love hurts you. The idea that it’s a difficulty you are better off without. The idea that it lies to you, betrays you and tricks you. The idea that it was never that...
These hands are frantic, along the hem of ribs and chest… against the heat of a body, at rest. The tragedy of waking, and how it all seems to get swallowed up… the affection and the good… the hands behind the pull. So true, until the morning… the waning strength of reverie. The night has ways of seeming clean.
AN UNSAFE NEIGHBORHOOD
They stole the things that we gave freely, the patterns of our sleeping, the calm beneath our breathing… the wounds that we were healing. And every run of conversation revealed a mess of complication, the testing of equations, discrepancies in confirmations and the loss of deemed sensations. This is not what we expected. It is the revelation of what we’ve dreaded. A crumbling arc ...
I dreamed that i went walking in the morning. Out in a field that I hadn’t seen before. I found my father there. I ran to him and hugged him and cried and clung to his side as we walked. He picked a tall piece of grass and chewed and spit tiny pieces, like he used to do when he was here. We laughed and retold old stories and recounted as many moments as we could, in whatever time we...
He was a selfish little thing. In ways that other selfish little things were not. He drained the ones he loved and, the ones he didn’t, he used up. But he was not a mean man, not intentionally … though the ways he treated and took from people often felt cold.
His mother was still young. Still beautiful and fair and smooth. Her face was soft and peach and her eyes held the ocean. She was...
February 2013
6 posts
Up from the water. A new son in splendor. The gains of grandeur, or the games of a voyeur. Back-slidden in nature, slinging dirt across the pavement, always behind on payments, but on the edge of something “really big”. That man’s feet are blistered and no one seems to listen, only willing to suggest persistence or give some empty explanation. But a lover isn’t silent when you ask if you’re...
February 22, 2013
The wait and wishes of devotion and how they always seem to stay in motion. The wilt and wild of the ocean and how it always seems to ease the tension. The fear of what we feel, a surge of something… loss or an assumption. The pull of what we reel, an emerging subtlety… love or a distraction. The enduring hope of a fisherman.
January 2013
13 posts
Run the water. Baptize the trouble. And we’ll try again, tomorrow.
Bryan Taylor January 5, 2013
Trees Please January 5, 2013
Blonde Waters January 5, 2013
Bryan Taylor at the lake January 5, 2013
NEW FIELDS
I remember the flash of the night… the crescendo of impulses and their abrupt flight. The sound of everything breathing, the rush of our scheming, and the calm of everything sleeping. I remember the gains and the losses… the stories told and the finales that crushed us. I remember the life that we had, the brilliance of unity and the way that time stood. But I can’t remember the...
MEANT TO BE
There is no greater purpose for our life, than relationships. We were meant for them … built for them. Everything in us calls and cries and longs for them. Family, friendships, and romantic partners … these are what, truly, bring us the greatest joy.
If we ever feel a pull away from such things, or an aversion to the pursuit of them, most often, it is because we are afraid of...
… and then, some days, a heart just hurts…
HUMAN NATURE
December 2012
9 posts
IMPURITY
We are the sea. A congregation of community, vast and pouring, set along the lengths of longing… a family in need. Is this the sound of an angry child? Tears beneath the moon… words beneath the roots… shame and what it really is, beneath the weight of truth. What is right has been reduced to feeling… and, though our honesty is failing, we’ve learned to rest in insincerity. Oil into...
Always say what you need. Silence should never be a reason for defeat.
MURMURATION
I dreamed that I fell into a river with a very strong pull. The gaze of all the animals, the cover of the moon, the spirit’s cry of mourning and the Earth’s call to ruin. The nature of all things is honesty, but we’ve forgotten the truth… and these bodies, meant for mothering, are no longer bearing fruit. We have every capability but no resolve to move, an...
THE VINEYARD
The words of wine across a room,
anchored in our bravery, a loosed reality… the need for what is free. This time of lines and boundaries, founded in a fear that falters, a bruised alter… the greed of love and need. We are ripe and ready to grieve.
DUST BOWL
The breed of our own type is really just a state of mind… it takes and breaks and then it climbs. And, though the mountain may seem kind, it eventually falls, like the sway of a rhyme. Its good to be free… but you have to know how to be. So, create what you need, fear what you feed, and take heed. The truth isn’t as simple, as you may read.
November 2012
9 posts
