Untitled

Like an ancient code
Explaining the mouths of rivers
And the lines of palms
Why day and night and wet and dry
And you and I exist

Feigning Bliss

lies is
love is not
i maintain
that love by deceiving is poetry
between the kiss and confession lies reality
lies, reality
nearly blinding and convincing
before love and binding is silence
blind and naked
there i undress
here made to stand strangled
laughing
upon his hand
this ignorance made with color
sworn to say bliss
but not believing it

O'Hara's Moon

The Moon is not as gentle as the Sun,
sometimes it is too demanding, too bold
it rapped on my window with its
big blue hand telling me it was time
to go to sleep. “Your friend the Sun
told me about you. You like to work
when the Sun goes down. You don’t sleep enough.

Why do you scribble at that desk
with such a thin pencil
into the long hours of night? Don’t you know
that I come for you?
For all of you?"

I did not hear the Moon’s last words,
my eyes were not accustomed to
such a brilliant diamond shine.
It affected me,

“I am sorry,” I said, “but I am a poet
and I work at night. I mean not to
interfere with your duties.”

I noticed the Moon’s pocked silver face
was more smooth on the right side
as it tilted its round head downward.
The Moon’s lips were but streaks,
golden ethereal dust marks

on an old highway of a face.
I wanted them to blow away as it spoke,

“Most people wait for my arrival. Most people
sit on the edge of their small beds and
tap their small feet together and
count the minutes before
I come” he said.

“You should hang up the clothes of day,
wash off the face you wear to work,
clean the hands that catch the Sun,
and open the closet for your night”.

“Yes?” I asked. My eyes has adjusted
to the Moon’s reticent glare.

“Your closet will be filled with
the things of dreams...
tangerines and paintings,
and the music of Ella Fitzgerald.”

“Then I will come to keep the night
just lucid enough for you to feel
the thoughts float to the tips of your fingers
and slide into that thin pencil of yours.”

I watched as the Moon turned its back
and noticed how round and hunched its shoulders
were. As it slunk down the path to the next house
I began to get very tired. Pretty soon I was asleep.

Book Review

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I fell in love with this book right away, as I tend to err toward darker undertones in fiction and writing. Reading it is a challenge, on account of the format and structure of the novel, but I love the playfulness and unconventionality that the author used to create a feeling of confusion and erudite profundity. It took me at least three days to read a whole chapter because of all the footnotes! Footnotes inside of footnotes inside of footnotes. It's like a literary scavenger hunt.

I really liked that aspect of this novel...it's not an easy read and its not for everyone, but if you can get through it, you definitely feel a sense of accomplishment. As a writer, I appreciate the skill it takes to craft an experimental novel such as this. The house in the novel itself is unusual and disorienting, and Danielewski is so adept at using his writing to make the reader feel just so as well. The text, at times, with its format and structure, mimics the feelings and situations of the characters in the book. Danielewski is SO good at this.

This novel is dark. It's unsettling in a way that you can't understand unless you read it. It's not a horror novel; it's not graphic in a scary way, but this book IS scary. When I read this book, I lived alone and had a hard time reading it in bed at night. Its difficult to describe, but this book just gave me the willies.

The plot is centered around a man who moves his family into a house and one day discovers that the inside of the house is actually "bigger" than the outside of the house. From there, his obsession with the house and downward spiral into the depths of the house overtake his life, his family, his sanity.

House of Leaves made me feel both claustrophobic and agoraphobic; yet compelled to keep reading. The author taps into that place in each of us that is still afraid of the dark and things that go bump in the night without ever having to "show" any of these conventionally "scary" things and concepts.

I was so impressed by this book, even when I couldn't follow the plot. It took a lot of patience to read each chapter, but was worth it. The author is a master of ergodic literature, pushing his reader to focus and really dig into the actual text, each word, in order to grasp one page after the next.

It has also been said that even the title, "House of Leaves", suggests that "leaves" is a synonym for "pages", thus making the "house" a book. You can't see the whole tree without studying each individual leaf.

Incredibly interesting, wholly challenging, and unsettingly mysterious.

I loved it.

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Talking to a Ghost

Unknowingly the day after you died, I sent you a text message wishing you luck on the LSAT.

I now realize that I was talking to a ghost.

This morning I woke up wanting to punch the universe in the face over and over and over again until it shouted back in submission, “Okay, okay! Enough! You can have him back!”

While I fight the urge to face the truth that this will never happen with anguish and uncertainty, I muster up the best in myself, tapping into that subterranean well that lies within all of us, and embrace it with the warmth and authenticity you approached your life with every day and remember you.

You.

My friend.

It hurts, but I slip loose the knots of the unthinkable and begin to remember you, though it’s a challenge because for me, you are still not gone.

And though you would be embarrassed to read this, you would never say.

Taking a page out of the book of jwc, I’ll do it anyway.

You always made me smile. Those remarkable blue eyes and snarky laugh. Your love of talking about Hesse, Vonnegut, and Salinger into the long hours of the night, ignoring my yawns and lazy responses. Your heartbreakingly honest confessions of a deep regret for past mistakes. The way you always gave my boyfriends unsavory nicknames and scoffed at my attempts to defend their honor. Your insatiable love of bucking tradition and blazing your own rebellious trail. The practical jokes. Your knack for passing out at the most inopportune moments. How you never forgot to ask about my parents, even across the distance of continents and the passing of months, years. Similarly, how time always managed to stand still for us until the next time we saw each other, picking up right where we left off, never missing a beat. A true rarity in friendships these days. I remember the impressive depths of your mind and staggering intelligence and how easy the sharing of profound thoughts was with you. I don't know if that type of comfortability came along simply with the sheer number of years I have known you (23 years to be exact), or if it was just always you. I think the latter. Because I like to think you served this purpose for many people. I was always Megs, not Megan, or Meg. You always called. “Clear your calendar” you would say, and nothing else. Leaving the details of your visits a mystery until I would hear your familiar voice on the other end of the phone telling me to “Save you a bar stool”. How you had this consistent lack of direction in life, but were always so unabashed about admitting it. It was endearing. And you were charming. Parents loved you. Teachers didn’t know what to do with you. You were silly and quick-witted; the biggest smartass I know. In friendships you were not fastidious, preferring to scatter your companionship out to every kind of person, but save the good stuff for a few. You fought wars and claimed conservatism, but you were a hippie at heart. You were a hero. And a patriot. I always hated arguing with you because you had this unbelievable knack for being right that only really, really gifted people possess. You were clever. You were authentic. You were an original. You were a good friend. You were my friend.

A few weeks before you passed, we spent one crazy night in Chicago together. Speeding through downtown streets, up until dawn, smoking cigarettes and laughing off old high school memories. We talked briefly about “over there”, but I know you preferred to speak less about the past and more about the future. I didn’t press you, but you said, “One day you’ll write it for me.”

You always supported my writing. So now I’m writing this for you.

Its unfair and I’m sad and angry and confused and I don’t know how I’m going to deal with knowing I will never see you again, but I will never forget you. I know that. And I will never let anyone else forget you. And by writing this, I honor the memory of you.

I will be kinder to strangers. Better to myself. More honest in my relationships. Stronger in my convictions. I will write more. And write better. I will do this moving forward because the only way I know how to honor you is to be a better me. And I’ll always be grateful when I wake up in the morning and know that that first smile that hides inside the pockets of each day belongs to you.

And tomorrow, when I throw my arms around the memory of you, I will never stop holding tight. And I promise you, I won’t weep for your death, but I will celebrate your life.

I will always, always love you.

Justin Wesley Cloe
August 2, 1980 – June 5, 2010

Book review

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster


My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If you love the playfulness of language at all, you will love this book. This book was written for lovers of the English language, people who frolic in the splashy joyfulness of syntax and diction, wanderers of the doldrums of grammar, and seekers of simple, breathtaking irony.

It's a childrens' adventure tale, but it doesn't take a kid to enjoy this story. In fact, the later I reread it in my years, the more meaning it had to me. The more wit I found in Juster's words.

If you have kids, put this book on their bookshelf. They will thank you when they finally learn to appreciate it. Hopefully, it will nurture their love of reading and words as much as it did for me.

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Book reviews

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand


My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is one of the best books I have ever read. I've read it over and over and yet, I still can't tell you why it made such an impression on me.

The characters are so fully developed, so acute and influential that you want to BE them. It's glamorous and elegant, the world of Ayn Rand, graced with descriptions of stunning architecture and juxtapositions of good versus evil. I don't find myself driven by Rand's "objectivism" philosophy of the selfish man, the individual above all, but I still found the way she portrayed this theme through her characters obsessively fascinating.

From the moment we are introduced to Roark standing on the edge of the cliff...the first sentence, "Howard Roark laughed", we are pulled into Ayn Rand's world of the ideal. She makes us aware of the existence of both opulence and poverty within our own souls.

The book is beautiful. She makes the stark lines of city dwelling and the coldness of power-driven men seem not so bleak. There is a love story there, don't be mistaken. But its between the reader and the characters.

I'll reread this book a million times and never get tired of it.

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Book reviews

Reasons for Moving, Darker & The Sargentville Not: Poems by Mark Strand


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This was the first book of poetry where I memorized an entire poem because it moved me so much. Here goes, from memory:

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

The absolute simplicity of this poem and the careful diction Strand chooses displays a mastery of the English language that I think only poets really possess.

If you read on, read more of his poems, you will see the theme of filling spaces and absences and voids. His words are so perfect. Every time.

For a long time I wanted to tattoo the last stanza of this poem on my body because it was the first piece of language I really, truly fell head over heels in love with.

Thank you Professor David Hamilton, University of Iowa Writer's Workshop, for introducing me to Mark Strand and for the subsequent love affair that followed.

It has been one of the most significant and lasting relationships I've ever had.

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Handle With Care

Can I get a moving walkway for all this emotional baggage?

I'm tired of carrying it around. Or better yet, make like a real airport and lose it. Drop it in the middle of Lake Michigan or the Bermuda Triangle. Leave its contents to be pulled and plucked at by the curious lips of strange ocean fish.

If that doesn't work, let's strap it haphazardly to the roof of some suburban mini-van and see how far we can get. Somewhere along the curves and bends of some lonely interstate highway I'll smile as it topples over the side, following the passing of an eighteen wheeler.

I'm free.

They'll flutter out of the open suitcase as it lies agape by the side of the road, like a giant face caught in a yawn. Moments, like shredded newspaper ads, litter the azure sky, the road, the windshields of cars. Travelers switch their wipers to "On", unaware of what they are brushing away.

As we speed further down the road, the wrinkles of my mind ease and slacken, spreading my memory out flat. I hold in a sigh. I let out a grin.

Miles behind, caught in between the blades of a beat-up Toyota is the memory of us.

And with a casual sweep, it's gone.

Hum drum dumb numb.

There's something about those city buses that crawl through the park in the morning, something slow and depressing. Like an old dog lumbering along, trying to keep up with his owner. This morning on my drive to work it hits me particularly hard. Umbrellas open up to dirty skies, blotting out blueless days. Those blurry faces staring vacantly out rain-streaked windows, following the same yellow lines of the same filthy streets for weeks upon end.

Finally, I break from the park and head up Lakeshore Drive, pausing at the Chicago Ave. stoplight where a man in french cuffs leers at me from inside his immaculate BMW. His glossy black cuff links stare back at me like the eyes on a snake.

Green light. I hit the gas. Hard. Swerving in and around idling cars, I accelerate, the heaving and whurring of my car engine drowning out the traffic report whining out of my radio. Faster and faster until I'm going 85 mph, trading the sad, rain-soaked skyline of the city behind me for the blank, outstretched gray horizon ahead.

At about Harlem Ave. it strikes me that I'm still going 80 mph and for what? I'm speeding faster and faster toward my life in a box. A box with knockdownable walls and numbered plaques. Every day it records my permanence with erasable pen.

When I arrive at work and get out of my car, I slam the door shut and gaze into the driver's side window. The face I see I do not recognize.

Me, or something like it.

Lately I have been searching for something without a name. I follow it and it chases me. I hide and it finds me. It reels me in and spits me out a different person everyday. What I am with you now is not who I have been. I have to look into the mirror to remember that I’m not someone else. To remember that I’m not that impulsive, passionate, irrational, glowing face I see staring back at me.

I’m not that. But I chase it. I see you in the wake of it, casually begging me to catch up. Your nonchalance about this Jekyll and Hyde within me makes me want to keep up with you even more, prove to you that I am what I see in the mirror when I don’t recognize myself. Knowing you makes that seems attainable and inescapable all at once.

It’s not something that I embrace heedlessly. Most of the time it jumps up from behind or out from murky blue-gray shadows on horribly lit streets or I see it when nothing’s there at all. It’s something I have created that you have control over. It’s a prison with no bars that I sit in willingly and without cause.

I am disenchanted and I don’t care. It’s something, really. To walk around in a dream all the time, not knowing which person I am, torn between who I am with you and who I am with someone else. And it’s silly to think I can remain both.