A Shark Bait's Eulogy

People are always telling me
how it's more likely
to be struck by lightning.
"There's no reason to be afraid,"
they'll all say,
which is easy to believe
before looking down and realizing
there's a comfortable hundred yards
between them and the waterline.
A perfect littoral hiding place.
Three fourths of our planet
and most of us are too terrified
to admit that the
allure of the sea
extends watercolor currents
and views that merit
million dollar beachfront realty.
Tiny sailboats
on sun-soaked horizons.
Plastic formulated sandcastles,
family portraits in white
at sunset.

There have only been
two thousand reported shark attacks
in the last four hundred years.
Over a thousand people
under the age of twenty-five die
per day
in car accidents.
And yet we'll speed
on congested highways
without a second thought
but not a toe is dipped
into the Atlantic
after dusk.

Relativity is risk's biggest downfall.
I can't count
the number of times
I've sprinted up the stairs
without even thinking
about the probability
of losing my footing
and smashing my skull
on the next step.
But the ocean, man,
it wigs me out
And I don't recall a time
when I was ever
amongst breaking waves,
completely at peace.

I've thought of death only casually--
compared it to simply
shutting off the lights,
or falling asleep forever.
On days it would feel like
it wouldn't matter
too much
if I were gone,
how, then
I wouldn't have to deal with
all of the coming uncertainties
and the mess that would
inevitably follow.
"It's been pretty good so far,
it's only a matter of time before
I fuck up."

But that's a cowardly mentality
and my crippling fear
of hurting other people
took care of that problem,
anyway.

Fear--it's ubiquitous.
Afraid of heights
Afraid of hospitals
Afraid of the dark.
These things separate
us from sharks--
as apex predators,
they fear
virtually nothing.
It is a presence that is
felt beyond
their watery province.
Distant sightings clear beaches,
shock waves ripple outward
from a surfer's
phantom limb
(The heroic tale
of being mistaken for a seal).
In minutes,
the guilty motherfucker
is gone,
stalking another school of fish,
but his star quality
will land him
a prime time slot
on tonight's news.

Maybe if sharks
were aware of their popularity,
they'd be more ruthless,
terrorize more coastal communes.
They'd live up
to the movie myths
and Discovery Channel speculations.
Somehow,
with their thick gray bodies
and emotionless black eyes,
they've won our silly human hearts
as much as
any other carnivorous dinosaur.
And their teeth hang
around our necks
on tacky leather cords
--an artless testimony
to our fascination
with the forces
we can't control.

The sad fact
is that I've never seen
"Save the Sharks!"
printed on buttons and tee shirts.
How can you revere
a creature that possesses
such raw power,
such fatal indiscretion?

But how can you not?

I like to believe that
if it came to it
I'd let a shark have me.
I invaded his territory,
fucked with his mealtime.
A maritime murder
is a fitting death sentence
for someone
who spent so much time
naively contemplating the deep.
It's a classic case
of fatal happenstance
and if Jaws started circling,
I like to think that
it'd be
just as
cinematic.

It'd be a terrifying way to go
but surely more dignified
than choking on a chicken bone.
But, who knows?
Maybe I'd still fight back
with everything I had
just to be able to tell people
that there is a reason to be afraid.

Suicide by shark attack--
how pathetic,
how impossible.
A pretentious,
noncommittal way out.
Mortality isn't common enough--
mostly the shark bites
just to fuck with you
And surfer bloodshed
is certainly more noble
than my own.

Death and sharks.
Comparatively,
there's no correlation.
The tides were never ours
for the taking,
but we decided that
sharks are scary
and now a tiny cut
will beach you
until the bleeding subsides.

So if I die
in the jaws
of that
aquatic serial killer--
a salt water surrender
to his finned finesse--
know that I'd find it poetic
And I'd be trying
not to be afraid
the whole
gory
way
down.

How Not to Get Lost

As a young writer just starting out, you don’t really get a lot of playing time.

Let me define that a little bit more coherently—you don’t get your name in lights, or pep rallies, or people holding up posters, or pasta parties, or hats, or confetti, or champagne explosions, or trophies, or state championship titles, or spirit days, or galleries, or big games. At least, not at first. There may be book signings and fancy events and pats on the back down the road, if you’re lucky. Office parties, black sharpies, movie adaptations, pay raises. If you're lucky. But, for now, you’re stuck.

Writing is a quiet life, and any writer will admit this to you. There isn’t a lot of honor that accompanies having your name splashed across some paperback cover. In all honesty, to most people, an author’s name means nothing. And consider a journalist, slaving for hours before a huge deadline to perfect that one tiny article that only a handful (give or take) will take the time to pour over. Sure, you get credit, but where’s the applause? Where’s the fanfare? Oh, right.

People may say that I didn’t try hard enough. Maybe I didn’t invest enough time into my blog, maybe I didn’t share enough of my work. And yeah, maybe some of this is true. But think about what it means to be a (slightly) better-than-average writer (and I don't mean, in any way, to put myself on a pedestal--writing is probably one of the sole things that I do relatively well, one of the only things that has ever made any sense to me. That's all I'm saying). Essays usually aren't a problem. With a solid foundation, you can bang one out in maybe an hour. Reading is both pleasurable and absolutely horrible--either you're getting lost in a story or you're overwhelmingly jealous of someone else's recognized talent (“why didn’t I think to phrase it like that?”). You start inadvertently familiarize yourself with a lot of words that people don't use that often in normal conversation—short term, this can inhibit you, but it will ultimately (hopefully) benefit you in the long-run. And you think of things in different ways. You may even notice things that other people usually don't, or at least put words to these things in your mind. The weather isn't just sunny--sunlight is spreading itself sluttily over tight downtown shops, jading all that lurks in the shadows. His eyes aren't just blue--his eyes are a deep, hapless hue that refurses to pledge its allegiance to either the hopes and dreams of his deterring past or his capacious future. These are the things your ninth grade English teacher tried to teach you. This is how your mind works. This is what happens when you grow up on a diet of Harry Potter novels and an early interest in the cynicism of alternative rock, prematurely divulging into YA lit and watching too many movies that may have been above your maturity level. Honestly, I don't know why I love to write. I can't really explain it. We'll just live in blissful ignorance. Of course, on top of this all-consuming desire to create, there are about a thousand other day-to-day responsibilities of a normal teenaged kid, like studying for actual classes so you can get the grades that will matter if you want to go to that one specific college and major in that one specific thing. So you can’t really take much time out of your day to write a short story, format a poem, type up a blog post, or, even, god forbid, journal. There were nights during my second semester of junior year when I was absolutely itching to just write one tiny line down and exhaustion from all of my other academic responsibilities crept up on me and the thought was lost forever. Gone.

Strategically, they don't tell you about the burdens of being a decent writer. How many young people can name the best-selling authors of today? How many people read all of the copy in a yearbook? How many people read all of the text in magazines instead of just skimming the photos? How many people get excited about the releases of new novels? How many people get excited about poetry? How many people can actually recognize good writing? And here's what's worse--besides youth readings and poorly publicized competitions, there isn't much opportunity for young writers to make names for themselves. Student publications might pave some stepping stones, but that's about it. If you're not on your school newspaper or yearbook staff, you're not technically doing much. And other kids don't really care. It's all about the athletes; the kids that can punt a ball, run fast, do things that can probably be easily learned. I'm not trying to discredit the virtues of physical activity, or even the glorification of school spirit in regards to football (Ok, maybe I am a little bit), but why isn't there spirit for us quiet crusaders? The ones who can't really do anything all that fancy with our bodies. The kids who are weirdly good at math, or drawing, or writing poetry. Even theater has become an easy thing to praise. I mean, you're literally on stage in front of hundreds of people, flowers are thrown at your feet. People can name dozens and dozens of actors, actresses, comedians, and TV personalities off of their heads. Your English teacher might draw a smiley face on your essay, and then what? They’ve read hundreds of other papers. That penned emoticon means absolutely nothing. It’s not like they’re chasing you down, begging you to wield your pen and take off, charging into the night, flanked by all the other brave students who can kind of write an essay. So how do I know if I’m any good?

There was a really wonderful book I read this year that touched me in a way that no other book has been able to in an extremely long time for several reasons. It was The Opposite of Loneliness by Marina Keegan. It's this collection of essays and stories that Keegan's friends and family compiled from her high school and college years, and each and every word is incredible. She writes of the bliss and accompanying ignorance of youth, the importance of believing in oneself and the world around us and the people we let into our lives, and the joys of being appreciative of the small things in life. Even in her fiction you can feel this desperation she has to move forward, to hold onto a sense of opportunity, excitement, and adventure. She was a graduate of Yale, an award-winning author, journalist, poet, actress, and activist, and she was twenty-two years old when she died in a car accident, five days after her graduation. And that terrifies me. Because people die. People actually die--they can just be going about their day to day lives and they can just die, at any random moment. And death isn't picky at all--he'll take anyone, no matter how promising their life is. "There's a really good chance I'll never do anything," Keegan wrote in her essay, Song for the Special. She was twenty-two. But, you see, she was able to do something--she had this entire reservoir of prose that she left behind and enough people who cared about her legacy to turn it all into a book that immortalized her in a sufficient two hundred and eight pages. But here's my dilemma—I don't have two hundred and eight pages. I’m five years shy of twenty-two and I don’t have anywhere close to two hundred and eight pages. I don't have anything worth sharing with the world. So, what if I die and I leave nothing behind and I'm lost? Because that's entirely possible. And that's so scary to me. While other kids my age can boast scholarships and trophies and colorful portfolios, I'm sitting in my room trying to figure out how I can even start doing what I want to do. That's literally terrifying.

I want to write something beautiful. I want to write something beautiful for you (you know who you are) and I want to write something beautiful for everybody else in this world. I want to be prolific and imaginative and smart. Because these late nights spent with a laptop and a pen have to mean something, someday. 

An Ode to Register Nine

I recently quit my job as a cashier at Harris Teeter. Disenchanting, I know, and maybe a little premature. But I have another job for the summer, so the point is that I'm financially stable (as far as a seventeen-year old's bank account goes), and now I'm less overwhelmed. You could go so far as to say that I am just simply whelmed. My junior year is drawing to a close, sure, but I have the daunting pressures of college applications falling fast upon my tired shoulders and a summer of swim coach woes ahead of me. But hey, I finished APUSH today! That scribblely chapter of my life is done! Celebrate those small triumphs, my dears. Waves of traffic light greens, that feeling after a final exam, those rare occasions when Pandora is undisputedly killing it.

Being a cashier is...interesting, which is really no surprise. Grocery stores themselves are interesting places. You'd be surprised at how much it takes to run a grocery store, or maybe you wouldn't. Maybe it's just not something many people think about all that often. One interesting thing was how quickly everybody was willing to bond with one another. My very first day, I had people introducing themselves and asking me how long I'd been working. Make no mistake, it's not a display of workplace politeness. Everybody just wants another contact they can add in case they need a shift covered. I knew a couple of people  who worked there already, so I didn't feel completely alone, but it was neat to meet other kids my age from all walks of life and chat with them during slow moments. It took me a little while to get the hang of working a register, but this was only because I didn't work very often. I changed my hours a lot, always trying to accommodate for my meager (but prevalent) social life, the stressors of eleventh grade, and my own personal need for "me" time. Different shifts have their varying pros and cons. Working in the middle of the day on the weekend merits chaos, long lines, huge orders, impatient families, but it goes by incredibly quickly. Working weekday afternoons is a little better, slower, but you're guaranteed to have enough time to read every splashy tabloid cover at least twice. Nighttime is the best and worst, simultaneously. It's always slow as hell, especially after seven. And those after-seven people are usually weird as hell. Either they're the smart yet crazy ones who decided to do their major grocery shopping late at night after everyone else has gone home, or they're those who forgot something and needed to run out quickly. If you're working until ten on a typical night, a lot of your time is devoted to mopping floors, organizing plastic bags, wiping down registers, or collecting baskets. Tedious stuff.

I'm not one for small talk anyway, so I guess cashiering was a strange profession for me to choose. I never really chatted with most customers who came through my line, just quietly rung up their orders. I got really good at bagging, if I must say so myself (nobody else really commented on this fact, but I was always careful to put like things together, make the bags a reasonable weight, and not crush any produce). Mainly I was just focused on not screwing up. It's a little bit of a whirlwind, especially when the place is busy. There's a premeditated list of things you have to say to/ ask the customer--"Hi, how are you?" (or something of the sort), "Did you find everything ok?" (or something of the sort), "Do you have a VIC card?" (or something of the sort), "Paper of plastic?" (or something of the sort). You have to make sure everything rings up, be on the look-out for coupons that might be stuck to products, recall or look up various four-digit PLU codes, communicate with your bagger (during the rare occasions that you have one helping you), process the customer's payment, scan all coupons, call over a manager to help you if a coupon doesn't scan (this happens literally every time), print the receipt, STATE, don't ask, that'd "we'd be happy to help you to your car today!", and congratulate them + partake in a paragraph long statement ("You have a chance to win five hundred dollars worth of free groceries if you fill out this survey online which is basically a chance for you to recall how badly I may have screwed up while checking you out today blah blah blah!) if a survey prints out with their receipt. And you have to do all of this pretty quickly. Nobody likes a slow cashier, but nobody really likes to help bag. It's funny. I digress.

Here are a couple things I did wrong:

• I never actually took the time to recite that aforementioned statement about the survey. They don't care. It was two parts defiance, ten parts my own laziness. 
• Sometimes I accidentally asked if a customer needed help out to their car, which doesn't sound bad but we're really supposed to make it a statement, as if I actually would be happy to help you out to your car. 
• I rarely carded anybody, and whenever I didn't, I could tell that they were a little offended, and whenever I did, I could tell that they were a little confused. It was so frustrating! I just never got it right. 
• Sometimes I just simply forgot to give people change which is a stupid thing to do, but not many people paid in cash so it was a break from the normal routine. Natural. Stupid. 
• Sometimes I'd miss coupons on things and customers would complain. My bad--sorry I didn't notice the teeny tiny microscopic sticker on your rotisserie chicken. 
• Often a customer would leave a bag behind and then it would automatically become my fault and we'd have to comp them if they came back for it later. Sorry you missed your fucking avocados. 
• There were a few times, when I'd just started working, that if something didn't scan, I'd just kinda give it to them. Which is what you're supposed to do anyway, but I'm pretty sure I've given away seventeen dollar cuts of meat before. 
• I never really got the official 411 on where things are in the godforsaken store, so when customers asked me I usually said something to the extent of "Um....try four...or maybe ten. Either one." 
• Never learned how to work U-Scan, never wanted to. 
• Did you know Harris Teeter legally can't sell alcohol before 12 on Sundays? I didn't. 

So, Harris Teeter was a weird experience, I think that that much is definitely clear. But my time spent as a lowly cashier did teach me a couple of things. First and foremost, it was my first "real" job, with tax deductions to a physical paycheck and an ugly uniform and a little name tag. I had been technically employed before this, yes, as a swim coach for my neighborhood's swim team, where I earned a significantly heftier amount of money (and arguably gained much more valuable life skills). But my dad was my boss and I knew most of the families that I worked with quite personally. So, while it definitely counts, it also doesn't. Harris Teeter was my first job with people I didn't know, in a not-so-welcoming workplace environment, with a clock I had to punch into, specific things today, an actual coalition of management, a break room, khakis, shifts, a clock that I watched desperately. Even though the fine art of cashiering isn't an exactly desirable or prestigious profession by any means, I did learn a lot. I was responsible for myself. I was responsible for my little register and all the customers who came through it. And even though I was only working for the money, that's a pretty justifiable reason to have a job as a high school junior. I paid for my own gas and most other things. I did a lot of thinking at work, grappled with a lot of big decisions and personal conflicts (scanning items gets pretty monotonous). There were rare (and beautiful) occasions when I did actually connect with customers. Whenever anybody bought everything bagels or cajun crab dip, I was always quick to express my love for such items. Some people were very kind. Others just didn't care, and I don't really blame them. One story that sticks out is this younger guy that bought ground elk meat on a Sunday night. I didn't even know we sold ground elk meat. When I mentioned this, he responded with the same sort of genuine wonderment, admitting that he had never tried elk meat and was buying it on a complete whim. We had a good laugh. I hope one day to be that spontaneous, to someday be content enough with life that when I stumble upon ground elk meat in the grocery store I'll go "hm, why ever not?" 

Although I have plenty of anecdotal evidence and physical artifacts of my time at the good ol' Teeter, my favorite relic are the two poems I was able to write as a commentary on the things I saw as a cashier. I titled them both "An Ode to Register Nine" (parts one and two, respectively), in regards to the actual register nine at the Stone Creek location Harris Teeter, which is almost never in use unless the store is exceptionally (and I mean, like, apocalyptically) busy. Part One has been pasted below. Part Two will come to you later.

AN ODE TO REGISTER NINE

people don’t buy each other enough flowers.

there are plenty of loaves of bread and

cases of beer; bananas, potato chips,

cat food, Coca-Cola.

but the floral department suffers

under the weight of our collective

predispositions.

most faces are blurs—

mere smudges on the proverbial clock

that counts down until closing time.

there’s a shrunken old man with a half empty cart

and a hand full of coupons

and a tall, smart-looking woman

who’s perfume temporarily cloaks the stench of produce

and forces the reality that

yes, there is life beyond the cold gray register,

believe it or not.

it’s true—

most people blend into the harsh fluorescents,

but some do stick out;

they leave a bad taste on the tongue,

or a smile ghosting the lips,

and it could be something small,

like the flair of their signature

or the bags under their eyes,

but, for some reason,

these people exhibit some idiosyncratic resonance

that could smell like sour milk

or taste like fresh coffee.

for example:

a man comes through the line,

sad eyes and a wrinkled shirt,

and in a hushed tone,

he speaks to his son

about visiting mom in the hospital that evening.

he jumps when his phone rings.

and his son looks so lost

even though he hasn’t let go of his father’s hand.

the man doesn’t need a bag for the bouquet of flowers.

they’re the third bunch he’s bought this week.

in another line,

a woman drops a tray of Asian food

and rice explodes across the floor like confetti.

she lets out a string of unholy words

and life goes on.

all so cyclical.

the man says thank you and leaves

his son at his side,

a little bit like an anchor,

a little bit like a ball and chain.

to stay sane,

one might try imagining lives for each individual grocery.

a pop-tart, grabbed on the way to school,

a bottle of wine,

sneakily procured from the refrigerator and shared on a roof,

a thank you card filled with false words.

or else one might succumb to the easier thoughts:

like, I know that it’s my  job and all

but why aren’t you helping me bag your three hundred dollar order

when there is a line four people deep behind you,

able-bodied sir?

but thanks for shopping with us and have a great evening.

across the store,

a girl pulls a boy close in the cleaning supplies aisle

and kisses him with purpose and lingering desperation—

she was smart enough to know that

separation based on rate of movement wasn’t limited to existence

in chemical solutions

and that if she let him drive home,

he’d go too fast.

he’d skid.

he’d crash.

for every “thank you”

there’s an accompanying

“I’m sorry”

trailing behind.

after a while

you begin to learn the circadian rhythm

of this corporate giant.

Saturdays and Sundays

are for families and roommates—

snarky remarks, shoulders squeezed, paper bags.

Monday through Thursday

are for the weathered pros,

zipping through aisles with unbridled efficiency.

keys jangle and phone voices carry.

Friday nights are for the lonely,

the tired,

falling apart in frozen foods.

and you

you, standing so close to the cans of soup,

your head almost in your hands,

because you saw that girl with the Band-Aids up her arms

scan that woman’s boxes of cereal,

and that man with his young daughter whizzed right past you

with the assuredness of somebody

who knows the aisles as well as he know the spattering of freckles

on his daughter’s smiling face

because he can’t bring himself to tell her that mom’s

never coming back.

and you just can’t stop noticing everybody else’s pain

and that’s enough to make you dissolve into tears

in the canned foods aisle.

but you also can’t stop seeing the beauty

in everything but yourself

and that’s enough to make you lose your mind.

you were a traffic light lover—

the parking lot was too safe for you

but the city avenues

made you sick

and the plastic bags in your hands

made you sicker.

so you quietly hope you’ll

bleed to death in a public restroom

or fall off of a balcony,

somewhere,

and land, mangled and at peace,

amongst tailored flower beds.

for now, however,

you lay beside the silence a thousand times

and you dry your eyes on jacket sleeves

and waxy receipt paper;

you pretend that it’s okay that inside

you’re waging a war against some asshole with

absolutely no sense of urgency.

you frequent the grocery store,

maybe because of the familiarity,

or because of the conformity,

but, for some reason,

the linearity of it all

always made you feel much better.

until tonight

when you caught sight of your reflection in the deli display

and only saw a ghost.

then everything suddenly sucked again

and you sought solace

among the New England clam chowders

and lobster bisques.

you leave abruptly

you pass the desolate floral department, the bakery,

the stacks of baskets.

later, a streetlamp laughs at you

as you pass, much too fast.

and you can’t stop thinking about anything else.

and it’s beautiful and it’s sad

and you hate yourself and you can’t explain why.

THE PARALIAN

The paralian sighs/
before cleaning his hands in a tide pool.

He speaks of bloodless wars and how those are often the hardest to win./
says he was much too far down the path of life/
before he realized that his manifest destiny didn't exist anywhere coast to coast./
says for too long he watched traffic lights change colors and let the red glow/
affect his mood.

He turns to me and laughs humorlessly./
says, "it's a bloodless war."/
then he looks away, out at the gray horizon,/
and says nothing./
I can't tell if he's at peace now/
or if the seaboard has just made him completely insane.

I walk away,
brushing the sand from my thighs/
and I wander into thoughts of foggy afternoons/
spent with you in a sleepy stupor./
I allow those grains of sand to fall through the cracks,/
immortalizing the moment/
in a snow globe-like casing.

I know I shouldn't stow such precious things on shelves/
but it's too risky to trust the fragility of memory.

I decide I don't like the sad man standing at the seaside./
it is clear to me that he didn't allow himself/
to enjoy enough of the messy, beautiful parts of life,/
like variegated skies, split open like scabs,/
or passionate scramblings over center consoles,/
and he reminds me of what I could have been/
had I not somehow triumphed in my own bloodless war.

There was something flimsy about existence/
that has since solidified./
It was gossamer-thin and terrifyingly out of reach for so long,/
unlike the palpable words that are now so heavy and opaque/
that they hang from wires in midair/
and light up as I pass,/
polychromatic and neon.

I hope the sad seaman can see words in real life too and not just on pages,/
I think, fleetingly, as I quicken my pace./
Then I decide that it doesn't matter./
I kick a stone the rest of the way home/
and imagine kicking it all the way to you,/
where you'd stop it under your foot and grin.

I leave the man behind.

The sky becomes bluer with every step.

I walk through a gate framed by yellow rose bushes./
I take a deep breath and exhale./
I can no longer smell the fetid shore;/
from here on out it is strictly smooth sailing.

I look up at the variegated sky./
It splits open like two French doors.

Like a scab.

TITANIC

one of the more disconsolate details of history,
in my opinion,
is the fact that a band was playing
and fireworks were going off
as the Titanic sunk.

and I believe that the fact that
the band kept playing
until, literally, the very end,
is one of the most heroic things
that anybody has ever done.

I guess it is just another example
of the miracle of human nature
and how we are taught
to always force a smile
even when well-aware that we are
truly, royally
fucked.
and it's sad how
it has always been so easy for us
to mistake calamities
for mere trivialities.

apparently,
disillusion is supposed to
trump terror every time,
and, in many cases, this is so.
ignorance is, after all, bliss.

because nobody told anybody
that if you were
lower-class, middle-aged, and male,
you were the most fucked of all.
the scariest part was that
you had to find out on your own,
when it was already way too late.
because the water was freezing
but it looked so damn beautiful
under the failing lights of the ship
and all those stars.

I know how easy it is
to feel like you're sinking sometimes
in crowded hallways and loud restaurants--
bathrooms at parties and
the rooftops of apartment buildings.
your own room, maybe.
but I want you to know
that the way I feel about you is colossal--
titanic, even, one might say.
and if you ever
feel yourself slipping again,
downwards into that
familiar icy black water,
I'll send the whole fucking coast guard
and then some
to pull you back to the surface
and all the way to shore
where I will hold you and never let go.

thoughts

these definitely suck and I guess they are what could be credited as a little collection of when I decided I was really interested in the structure and characteristics of common unhealthy relationships and the long-term effects. I just wanted to finally post them somewhere because I don't know what to do with them. 

THE LOST BOY (The Charmer and the Charmed) 

your tears were the currency 
with which you bought my kisses.

it was all I could do to 
keep holding your hand 
as the waves battered our ship.

however, 
the omniscient storm often teased us 
with its apparent passing
and it was on those days that I noticed
the treasure map etched into the lines
of you palms.

purloined by abjection
was the infinite ocean that you called home;
smoke and mirrors and white caps against gray skies.
but you navigated it with such stoic finesse,
and I too often ignored 
the nights when you couldn't stand up on your own--
the spirit of the sea weighed heavy on your shoulders.

a wayward expatriate of the shores
from which you had been born,
I found your measured combination of 
surliness and buoyancy to be endlessly alluring.
there was always a secret ghosting your lips,
a testimony to 
the tangled knots of your being
that I could never quite unravel.

I loved you
even on days when your Archipelago blue eyes
were cloudy with tempestuousness and
sea water dripped unceremoniously from your cheeks.

but you couldn't stay forever; 
doomed by the tendency of your kind.
you--a despairing sailor--and I--
a fallaciously propitious lighthouse
moored on an awkward, jutting cliff--
were destined to cross paths but once
and spend the rest of our days apart,
searching for a beacon in the shades of gray
and the disillusions of the watery horizon
that will inevitably send us desperately anchoring ourselves 
on some seemingly idyllic margin of land between the sea and
real life. 
for now, it's bows to the great beyond.
the tide will erase my expenditure;
the saltwater becomes a catalyst for your disappearance 
into the deep. 

 Midnight In Gotham (The Adventurers) 

it's dark as hell
he's waiting for her in a desolate coffee shop, humming Midnight in Gotham
as she watches all the lies she had been telling herself scatter across her bedroom floor,
like a string of delicate pearls ripped from her
pretty neck,
or a house of cards blown over by a breeze. 

and maybe it was just because the monotony of his 
everyday life was broken up by the sound of her laugh
in crowded places,
or because he could never seem to turn the beautiful words
in his head into something that could be said out loud,
but for whatever reason, he could see her clearly
through the rain-soaked window pane.
his breath caught in his throat and he blinked twice
but she stayed, haunting his sheltered version of reality.
the careful architecture of his thoughts was shattered by the way
she was able to slip into the guarded radius of his sequestered world
and sleep next to him in his dreams.

the real problem was that he couldn't separate the gray-green of her eyes from the 
gray-green of the ocean.
a fatal mistake to make, when you're caught in the eye of the storm.

he goes to the register and buys a coffee.
he sits at a table alone and stares at the wood grains,
wondering how he let this get so bad. 

she is alone in her room, wondering how she could ever
possibly tell him. 

she had hoped that her brackishness would drown him.
she hopes, still, that perhaps he'll retreat when he discovers
the looming shadows of the retaining walls
she built around herself
and graffitied with idiosyncratic pieces of poetry
and broken shards of her own soul.

because the truth is that he is her maverick 
and that she half believes that his existence is a myth 
because nobody could possibly 
be so ethereal and not be swept away by the unforgiving tide.

the walls are conglomerate configurations of her introverted
being. 
and maybe the walls will collapse at his longing gaze.
and maybe they'll fall in love
atop a heap of rubble born from the regularity of self-doubt.
but neither of them could ever know.   

oh, to wage a war with such meticulous rules. 

the narcissist and the healer

it is valentine’s day and

I wonder if you know this

or if you just think of it as another mundane day.

"mundane"

Did you ever think that about me?

or were all the beautiful things you said to me true

like “I am in love with you” or

"you never mattered to me".

What a funny phrase

"matter"—we are all made of more or less the same things

that stars and coral reefs and insects are made of.

we’re all the same, really, underneath our crumbling facades and yet I never meant anything to you.

but you held my hand in the art museum once

and you pointed at Starry Night and spewed random facts about Van Gogh

that of course, only you would know

and I clutched your arm and thought about The Smiths

and how the queen must be dead, somewhere

because I am holding hands with the king.

you kissed me on the forehead when we said our last goodbyes

now I have a headache there that fingers out from behind my eyes.

alone, alone, alone repeats in my head until it becomes detached from its meaning, as dull and lifeless as the 

jagged pieces of the shattered yellow coffee mug that I left on the floor

because those pieces tell our story and I clutch them tightly until blood seeps from my palms.

you never played any instruments

or wrote any poetry

or even bought me flowers

but I can’t listen to music

or read a book

or walk in the park

without catching the scent of your skin in the breeze.

you spent more money on your fucking aftershave

than you ever spent on me

but I believed that when you touched my face,

when you harnessed all of the gentleness in the world and

pulled yourself out of your dark pit of vanity

and told me you needed me,

that it was all more valuable than any other form of love

that anyone else could offer.

we were the charmer and the charmed,

the narcissist and the healer,

but you never loved me.

you never even loved yourself.

you just needed someone to admire you

someone that you could promise empty promises to until the clenched fist of self-doubt that had rooted itself 

deep in the very marrow of your bones was temporarily sedated.

so when we first met in that bar

and you traced a pattern with your long fingers onto the bare skin of my shoulder that seemed very much like 

a treasure map to the kisses I would later leave along your jaw,

I know now that you were already empty and hollow and sad

and that you had been that way for years.

maybe you’re in that same bar tonight

tracing that same treasure map onto some other girl’s skin

hoping to feel needed or maybe hoping to feel anything.

we don’t choose who we fall in love with

but it’s a damn shame, really,

that I fell in love with you.

ON MEETING MATT HITT

This past Monday I was lucky enough to go to a very intimate show at Local 506 in Chapel Hill to see Drowners along with a couple of other relatively underground bands (if you are unfamiliar with Drowners, here is the promo video for the fall tour that was released this past July). It happened to be my first indoor concert, as every other show I've been to has either been a festival or an outdoor venue. We got there pretty early because I knew we had a good chance of meeting the band beforehand, had dinner in Chapel Hill, and then I loitered around the venue during their sound check. Somehow, the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, god bless his soul, was on my side, because shortly after sound check ended, I noticed a lanky figure in all black about to cross the street a few yards away, smoking a cigarette (ding, ding, it was Matt Hitt!!!!). A friend of mine and I basically hauled ass (as coolly as one can) over to him and briefly introduced ourselves. He was very nice, a little bit shy it seemed. I remember that he seemed smaller in person, even though he still towered over me by at least seven or eight inches. For those of you that aren't familiar with the lovely Matthew Hitt, here's a little background info: Matt formed Drowners back in early 2012 when he moved to NYC from Wales to pursue a career in modelling. The band's first full length album was released at the beginning of this year, and since the release of their earlier EP, they have toured the U.S. and Europe, doing a number of solo shows and also opening for acts like Arctic Monkeys, The Vaccines, Foals, SKATERS, and Temples. Matt has become a pretty established model as well, and in all honesty I kind of just want to sit him down and feed the guy a cheeseburger. He's absolutely precious though, and he complimented my shirt (it's made by a company that his bandmate, Jack Ridley, supports if I'm not mistaken--there's definitely some affiliation) and was really nice about taking pictures and I felt really bad because it looked like he had been about to make a phone call before we essentially ambushed him but he was very chill about it. He was happy to sign my CD and even happier to take a picture and then he went on his merry way while I quietly freaked out.

Here are our photos together:

The show wasn't for a couple of hours so we hung out at the venue until they let us in and then hung out through the first two bands which were pretty awful, in all honesty. Finally, around eleven, Drowners started setting up and Matt Hitt was pathetically drunk and very touchy with his band mates (which was kind of adorable). They opened with "My Little Red Book" which was really exciting, considering I'm a huge fan of The Last Shadow Puppets' cover of the same song back in 2008, and throughout the rest of the show it was a constant back and forth between jamming out and making sure Matt Hitt wasn't about to fall on top of me. Eventually he did fall off the stage, the poor guy, but luckily he seemed alright afterwards. It was actually pretty comical, to tell the truth, and Matt made it into a valuable learning moment, slurring "Shakespeare used little boys in his plays for women parts, how much more embarrassing is that than me falling off the stage?" A part of me desperately hopes (and wholeheartedly expects) that one day Drowners will become huge and I'll have the fortune of being able to say that I saw them when they were just starting out, met Matt and Jack, kissed Matt's neck, drank from his beer, and got him to sign my CD. Oh, and Matt actually sat through an entire song.
Probably the funniest/strangest moment of the show was the very end, when Matt decided he wanted to crowd surf in the tiny congregation of teenage girls clustered at the stage--literally there were like, sixty of us; the show wasn't even close to being sold out. He ended up kind of rolling onto my sister and then into this one girl's arms and nobody could even lift him up because, despite his lanky frame, the man is over six feet and he's got pretty broad shoulders, so it ended after a few seconds with a bunch of people just kind of gently setting him on the ground. That didn't stop him from trying it a second time, however, at which point I think everybody was a little fed up with his antics and he ended up on the floor in shockingly less time. I wanted to help him back up on stage the second time because frankly, it was about four feet high and he was just so drunk, but he decided to kind of thrust himself on stage and I ended up getting shoved out of the way by nothing other than Matt Hitt's nonexistent butt, which was a beautiful experience, naturally. We left pretty much immediately after the show ended--I'd already met Matt and gotten Jack to sign my CD as well and I was pretty pooped and kind of in a daze. All in all, I think they're great live, or rather I think they have the potential to be great live. Let's face it--it must've been kind of an off night. I mean, a Monday night in Chapel Hill during the university's fall break? What idiot scheduled that show for them? So I do feel bad, but I still think they're talented and they played well and while Matt's stage presence was, well, borderline cataclysmic, he was still entertaining and somehow charming.


Here are a few of the videos and photos I took. Sorry the photos aren't great quality--I was reluctant to use flash because I was right underneath Matt and I didn't want to aggravate him but the red light was pretty garish:

SETLIST:

MY LITTLE RED BOOK (COVER)

WAYS TO PHRASE A REJECTION

LUV, HOLD ME DOWN

WATCH YOU CHANGE

PURE PLEASURE

WELL, PEOPLE WILL TALK

UNZIP YOUR HARRINGTON

A BUTTON ON YOUR BLOUSE

LET ME FINISH

SEX BEAT (COVER)

LONG HAIR

SHELL ACROSS THE TONGUE

BAR CHAT

(Matt Hitt, if you ever stumble upon this post, know that I love you)