Robinson & Grayland, Richmond, VA

April 29, 2015

Richmond

www.wordsinwait.blogspot.com

Sometimes I like it here.
It is a soundless ruin that
still somehow shouts 
many millions of stories
through broken toothed windows.
Every block is a shelf
stacked and sagging with histories
of all things said and done and
what went unsaid and undone.

All these buildings falling
quietly around me
have spoken volumes
about what it means to rotate 
and yet stand still-
to stand in one place and spin
without ever consciously committing
to this act of growing old.

In this place I have decided-
for the first time
to put my story down
into the spaces left open
between streets and sidewalks-
these streets and sidewalks.

I lay myself down
one letter at a time
alongside my neighbors knelt 
with their hands in this dirt
digging in search of themselves and
finding the place they
will one day lie down.

I want my hands dirty 
like theirs
and my porch crumbling
showing evidence of life and time
and wearing this dirt and time
in that old book dignity-
broken-spined and dusty but
still there with something to say.

Strawberry Street, Richmond, VA

April 29, 2015

Warriors

www.wordsinwait.blogspot.com

We each have an intrinsic drive to survive-

A warrior cell that commands us to

breathe deeper and refuse

to silently submit and be broken.

It forces arrows out like splinters

and ignites the light to cut

through our clouded eyes.

in the moment that we are most bent over by what

we have heaped upon ourselves

this warrior carries its demands

on a voyage through our veins

to reach our stuttering heart

so that even when pressed against

the ground in drunken stupor or

pinned to the wall by shame we are

compelled to cry out and claim

something for ourselves-

something made rightfully ours by

that undefined divine.

That moment marks our baptism

into a new faith where

our warrior becomes our god

where we worship ourselves by

silencing our self destructor-

telling the part of us willing

to go to hell to be right

to shut up and be still-

and in that silence we

can finally hear our individual truths

and believe in them.

Workhorse

www.wordsinwait.blogspot.com

My job is moving boxes.

I lift them.

I carry them.

I stack them.

It requires no mental acuteness

just force and motion.

I am a workhorse.

Once this was a source of shame.

A downfall.

A disgrace.

A disappointment.

A failure not exclusively my own

passed with bread at the family table.

But I'm not a simple beast.

Untaxed by trade my mind is free.

It's a resourceful explorer

wandering like a wild creature

not a broken brute.

Cherry Street, Oregon Hill, Richmond, VA

April 29, 2015

Getting Clean

www.wordsinwait.blogspot.com

I once read an Aldous Huxley quote in the forward of Brave New World in which he described chronic remorse as the most hapless of human emotions. Perhaps the catchiest line of the quote, the line that has stayed with me is, “Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.”

Of course Huxley is referring to his remorse when it comes to Brave New World – his regrets when it comes to plot structure, character development and other literary features in the text of the novel. This type of remorse is one that I wish I could empathize with. I would love to digress on the features of my beloved novel and consider how I might do things differently and how that might have led to a million more people loving my book, in addition of the millions that found love for it just the way it was.

Unfortunately, my crimes are not literary and are not ones that would be the subject of heated discussion in a high school English class. My infidelity, selfishness, and drunken debauchery wouldn’t make for good scholarly debates. Quite the contrary, they are mistakes that people are uncomfortable acknowledging, and I am the most uncomfortable of those people. My mistakes are burned into me and the people that I love and are painful when exposed to the open air. My mistakes are weapons that are used to burn me when I become too confident or at ease with myself.

For this reason, it is difficult to heed Huxley’s advice and let my failings become the dust of former footsteps – dust easily disrupted by new wind and forgotten in the distance. My dirt is always there, on me and on the mirrors in which I search for myself.

I’m not alone – not the only human trying to get clean. We all struggle to shake off our former selves and the regrets that bind us to our past. Even when we are diligent in our efforts to get clean and stay clean, we collect dirt.

The analogy of cleanliness and spiritual fitness is an easy one for me to grasp because I clean people’s houses. Every week or two I am wiping down the same surfaces, mopping the same floors, and scrubbing the same toilets. The dirt is different dirt than the week before but really it’s all the same – settling in the same places and originating from the same sources – from the same patterns of behavior.

When I’m cleaning, I am always struck by the futility of it and I wait in fear for the day that these people are struck by it as well.  But that doesn’t happen. Instead, they tell me that a feeling of rejuvenation fills the air, mingling with the scent of bleach and PineSol. In the moments after everything has been cleaned, these people feel compelled to do the things that they’ve been meaning to do – to clean out their closets or go through those stacks of papers on their desk. It’s as if they had been weighted down and immobile by the layers of dust – that the grime had made things impossible to grasp or made them unwilling to grasp those things.

Obviously there is no return to that pristine state we started in. We will never be granted an eternal state of grace. However, every time that we work to get clean we are able to catch a glimpse of the self that we aspire to. If we don’t make an effort to get clean, we risk losing all of ourselves in what we accumulate. It’s what we manage to do in the moments of clarity that matter and will shine bright in the measure of our lives.

Final Flags, Richmond, VIrginia

To You,

I am a fortunate child

fostered from a forgotten heap

by thought-filled architects who

send one hundred whispered wisdoms

into the empty cups of my ears

disrupting dusty abstraction

long settled in the hot air of my head.

One hundred pillow fingered hands

tilt my chin into light

and ease open locked jaws

to taste the fresh fruit and air

that will rouse my stagnant cells.

Your Friend,

A

To You,

In the foreword of Brave New World Aldous Huxley writes:

Chronic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most undesirable

sentiment. If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you 

can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time. On no

account brood over your wrong-doing. Rolling in the muck is not the best 

way of getting clean.  

As someone who has behaved badly, I felt great relief when I discovered this passage over two years ago. It was as though I had finally been given permission to stop pummeling myself, something any guilty person with a conscience would celebrate. However, I have found it surprisingly impossible to abide by Huxley's recommendation. I feel guilty for trying to cast off the guilt accrued for my collection of wrong-doing. It is as though there is an on-going debate between my past, present, and future selves. Past Self wields guilt in self-flagellation, arguing that my penance is my suffering. Future Self argues for change, suggesting that I can't be useful if I'm crippled by guilt. Present Self is humbled by confusion.

Your Friend,

A

Random Words

To You,

I am almost 35 and completely uncertain about who I am supposed to be. I feel like I've always been searching for myself, never sure footed in my path. Lately I find that I have been thinking about my biological father, who I never had the chance to meet but heard was an excellent man. When he was 34 my father was a successful salesman, providing well for his wife and two sons. However, he had what's been described as an epiphany, realizing that he didn't want to be salesman. What he really wanted was to be a teacher, specifically a teacher who worked with autistic children. He enrolled in a Master's program and became a special education teacher. Three years later he laid down on the sofa to take a nap, had a stroke, and died. Today, I examine my current state and consider how my dreams don't quite match up with my reality. I think about the honorable decision that my father made and I hope that I can be that brave. The one lesson that I my father left me with is that I would rather falter, fail, or die doing something that I want to, than falter, fail, or die doing something that I don't. 

Your Friend,

A

To you,

I am bilingual

a cloud of language

a dense collection of words

certain to burst.

I speak in storms

ungovernable rain

falling in audible patterns

filling or flooding.

Some messages unspoken

observable in the shadows

cast by my folded arms

and the electric angles of my eyes.

What's seem and heard

frequently colliding

thunder and lightening

an imperfect storm.

Your Friend,

A

Lost & Found

It's been many months since any writing has been posted publicly and I've come back to this project with a new energy. Although most of the flags around Richmond have been removed, I haven't lost heart in the idea of continuing to write and share that writing in some way. I've decided to post the handful of flags that I have had waiting and then to find new ways to post new writing in public. 

The fantasy of being a published writer has traveled with me since I was a child but I've started to believe that being published doesn't have to be what I always imagined. In a changing world that seems full of more gadgets than books, I don't know that being a writer of books seems to hold the same weight in my mind. It's almost like wanting to be a VCR repairman in 2015. However, I don't want to just send my thoughts adrift on the cyber-sea either. My desire is to find a way to communicate with the world that merges past and present, a way to communicate that can grow and change as I do and as the world does around me. 

For many years I have attempted to combine art and writing in some way. I've pursued more traditional routes like zines or simply placing words in art or art on pages of words. The dissatisfaction with the result would compel me into focusing on one or the other or shift between the two in some kind of disjointed creative process. It would leave me feeling like an exhausted bigamist, ready to abandon all. I admit that a prayer flag or a paper airplane might not fully capture the art that is in my mind. Still, the act of filling these objects with my words and placing them in a spot that speaks to me sometimes feels like composing a painting or building a sculpture.

This project is an experiment of invention...the invention of my own language. I am combining words and symbols to tell some truths about myself and what I experience with the hope that someone else will find these messages, like hieroglyphics on a cave wall, and appreciate them.

33. Cary & Beaumont, Richmond, Virginia

October 7, 2014

To a You,

Today I hold captive this tongue

notoriously quick to split and spit venom

because today in the silence of this battered brain

I heard a most reasonable voice

urging me

with sounds so soft and humble

to be thankful.

Be thankful that you feel this Anger

it said

because this means you are saved.

Turn it inside out in your mind

instead of hurling it against your Lover

or your Mother

or your Children.

Hold this Anger up like a map

that shows you where to find yourself-

where you've been

where you never want to go again

where your boundaries are

and give thanks.

These words were a foreign language

to this dumb child

and the stretch of silence before I spoke

was an unfamiliar region

but I stayed there

until through a cell of broken teeth

I heard my tongue move in thanks.

Your Friend,

A