civilized's blog

they walk hand-in-hand down busy streets filled with
gasoline and people meeting
she’s a cellar door with a talent for mischief
and has hands in the place where her eyes should be
he’s secretly swallowing the birds and the bees
and has holes in his lungs from the smoke that he breathes
and they’re happy
together 

they sleep side-by-side until one day she doesn’t
want cigarette smoke caught in her hair 
she learns a lesson in being fair
and mimics the earth by loving in waves
he takes the syrup drip-dripping from her lips
and condemns his affection with slides and slips and
when they reach the train station he tells her he’s
escaping her volcanic perfection because

they learned to run before they could walk
learned to scream before they could talk
learned love is revelation and trust is shock
but they still didn’t know whether to knock or just walk in
and that’s when word-weapons crashed banged slit their throats
filled moats with blood and angry words and down turns
like off-balance sleep walkers they drifted and fell
apart into the deep end of their fears for one another

  Read more »

(The title says it all but I'll say it again here: I sent this essay to one of my top-choice schools whilst applying there for college. I'm not going to name the school because that feels weirdly like betrayal(?). The prompt was something along the lines of "talk about your relationship with your arch-nemesis," - so, enjoy. It gets weird fast.)

            My arch-nemesis doesn’t wear a dark cape or have an evil-looking mask or even live on this plane of existence. In fact, when I imagine it, it kind of looks like me. Maybe it’s a little hunched over or cackling madly, but in a general sense, my Writer’s Block – and yes, it seems to have been designed specifically for me – looks and sounds a lot like I do. It would be disconcerting if not for the fact that I’ve always imagined the inside of my brain to have several me-looking characters running around and having jobs like Chief Rememberer and President of Idea Forming.

            But my Writer’s Block is tricky. I don’t know if it solely clocks in when I need it least, or if it’s something else entirely, floating from department to department and cleverly rendering small things useless until chaos ensues.   Read more »

lived in like a hand-me-down house
she dresses her loneliness in gold because she can’t afford to lose it
clinging like a stone pulled to the bottom of the sea
the waves reach for her soul and come up empty

they always told her it’d be a one-way street
too full to have substance too blank to be free
but she sinks into the feeling like an old armchair
and remembers that she is the only one who knows
how wood floors creak

she lives in a state of stagnancy 
trimming the wicks that burn her down
but never trimming her fingernails
she is a portrait of a forest long forgotten
because the people that gaze upon her
can’t tell if she lives as fiction or fact

and they prod her into life sometimes
a Frankenstein monster desperate for a lover
angering with wilted righteousness and hope for North Star spark
it is as though they forget she’s been had
dried up moved out and gutted 
and her fate is locked behind cellar doors
stripped bare but for the gold that shields it

i’m with you winding down dark roads well-known
taking turns we’ve made so many times
separately and together 

and i say it offhand like 
it doesn’t matter
shout it loud
brush it off
ignore the blood 

i always pretend i’ve said it enough to dilute the sting
but it will always be festering 
and raw 

and i’m with you nearly home now
wheel steering itself with familiarity
that is due in part to our independent trunks
but mostly to the roots that connect us

i always say more than i mean but 
suddenly you are the one revealing a lesion that
is shaped so similarly to mine and
falls heavily to the ground like a bridge between 
stage-set nations 

i say too much and some of it is wrong and
i try not to pull back your dressings
though i so badly wish to compare your wound to mine
find our corresponding contusions 
share the scars and make a pact like
blood-brothers

i’m sorry for not knowing this path
and i’m sorry for desperately wanting to travel down it

  Read more »

six weeks after first snowfall he sees
six dainty paw prints leading up to his door
it’s the back door
with the hole in the bottom
that has been covered with cardboard
and is now letting in a draft
the house is always cold but it seems warmer now

there is a three-lettered creature that eats
the food he puts out
he does not see it often but when he does
it is in the mornings when he catches it by surprise

three days after he fixes the once-fixed hole in the door
he names the creature Cat and tells it he loves it every day
some days he means it and other days
he just needs to say those words to someone

Cat keeps mostly to himself (herself?) except when the food comes out
which is in the mornings before the sun reaches the stairwell
and there is no longer the sting of surprise
sometimes he will feel Cat at his ankles and it is then
that he tells it he loves it

one week before the rent he cannot afford is due
he notices that Cat has gained weight and he realizes
he is happy to care for this creature because
he truly does love it

he leaves for work when the sun has passed the 
family portrait that has become something of a war memorial
when he exits the house he too passes the picture
and it reminds him that money is not everything
but it is involved in most things

  Read more »

she beats a perfect staccato poetry with her heels down the hall
induces whiplash in the fine young men who all would love to be her lover
and carves great lines of frustration in the girls who wish to see her fall
but on she struts the fashion line down runways made of silver ice
the coins she drops in her narrow wake clink cheaply on the platinum guise
her gaze climbs with clever hands to the ever-higher summit spot
she feels scaled fire on her soles and purges on the dragon girls
and if she tops the highest rung before her worth plummets down
the poetry she used to write will immortalize her poisoned bite

they were like two puzzle pieces in that
she was a corner piece and he was a middle piece and they did not match at all
but the small child that is fate had mashed them together so determinedly that
her edges were dented and his protrusion ripped off
and they fit together only through mutual sacrifice
the kind that ruins both parties and ensures they will
never be congruent to the picture or each other
but will never be seperate again

Title from Hamlet.

Today in Shakespeare we shared our names and interests and
I said I like to wear cute clothing and
it's true.
Today I also said that I am excited to read plays
but that is false because it's the
sonnets I am barely containing myself for.

It's been four years and yet I'm still prone to
lie in the same breath as a truth.

Today I wore a new shirt,
a billowy, light material cinching and flowing around my torso.
There are stains of lies on this shirt
but they are quiet and unnoticable in the lighting of most rooms.
When I go home my mother will take my shirt and hold it under the sun
and she will look at me with the knowledge of my lies in her eyes
and I won't deny them because she
likes sonnets too.

He walks into calculus with swagger,
just mindless enough to be considered
attractive.

He said hi to me in the hall today but I was looking past him and I
kept walking, pretending my head was in the clouds.
He said hi to me yesterday, too, on my way out the door.
He was chopping wood and I walked past,
made a snarky comment about manly men chopping wood with manliness,
looked away before he could smile.
I do not know why.

He sits in a chair two seats behind me
until we are arranged by the teacher
arbitrarily.

His family already had five children rooting themselves in town
when we moved in.
I was three and he was almost three and I'm told that when I first met him,
I was naked.
We went to kindergarten together,
sat on the bus together,
played airsoft with his brothers and climbed the hills behind his house together.
I remember I hated him once, when our music teacher liked him best because
they shared a birthday.

I end up seated on one end of the back row
and he at the other.
I look up and catch his nervous shift,
an almost insecure intentness as he stares at his sleeves.

  Read more »

my mother goes on long walks with herself
she has special shoes that she wears and a backpack of water
she is gone for hours at a time and sometimes much longer
and when she returns she sometimes forgets that we can see her
and I hear her singing to herself in the shower and
she doesn't sound so far away in those moments
but the door opens on a goddess dressed in mist
and I wonder why she tethers herself to earth when she could be
gone walking

Inspired by Frank Glazer's performance of Bach's Toccata.

Two brothers dance side by side
shuffle-shuffling left and right
there's a song in their hearts telling them 
reach for the sky
so they let go of their doubts and begin the climb

The two set out with the wind at their backs
the sun urging them on as they follow the path
but halfway up the path loses its way 
the first brother pulls ahead and the second falls away
never do they truly part
but the clouds close over them and 
they can't remember
why they started
their fiery motivation
reduced to glowing ember
and they plod along so slowly now

As suddenly as they began, they appear in a clearing
it seems they're rewarded for their persevering
the second brother, who'd fallen behind
tips his face up and looks toward the sky
the clouds pass and the wood gets lighter
to his delight the path keeps winding higher
summit in sight, they take off at a run
greying cloudy spirits ignited with sun
and in their haste, they trip over one another
it's brother over brother over brother over brother
they become a rolling boil of scrabbling limbs
a race to the finish that neither will win

  Read more »

some things are like cliff diving
with no care for crashes or
burns

like driving for the first time
or sleeping between the trees
or buying something off the internet 

it’s a hard thing
to let someone pluck the feathers from your wings
and trust they will use your flight
to fill a mattress to ease your landing

it is a hard thing
to believe in something
you cannot see 
or touch or taste

It’s strange to think about how 
everyone is conscious 
everyone is going somewhere to meet some need
all the people on the trains
the glassy-eyed boy in the back of the bus
all the people in the cars are
going somewhere to reach an end
and all our lives we think about other humans
in this all-encompassing, drone-like fashion
that truly dehumanizes everyone and all their thoughts
and all their needs and where they’re going doesn’t matter
nearly as much as yours do
because even though everyone is awake and aware
it is difficult to imagine that
the crowds of people listlessly drifting from one place to another
are real people with thoughts and feelings 
just like you
just like me
they are thinking and they are wishing
and they are going somewhere just as much as you are
but that knowledge is often forgotten
and this is why people do horrible things
they forget that everyone has a different point of view
that all the right and wrong opinions of all the other people in the world
matter
just as much as theirs 
because even if you are unable to hear the thoughts of others
they are thinking
they are doing something and going somewhere
and they will defend their actions because they have reasons
just like you do
and they will suddenly slow down 
change lanes
cut just in front of you even though the traffic’s bad
not to antagonize you
but because they almost missed the turn that would
lead them to their daughter’s birthday party Read more »

he pulls spare six-cent reactions
from her dark skinned lips
so cheaply does he reveal an
invisible heartlessness inside himself
but still she tosses pennies that 
she thinks she can afford

stains on damp sheets that must be
washed of iniquity
he robs her body and her heart
the same vessel that so readily shed its light 
for a necessitous man with a soul of disdain 

she doesn’t know 
what it’s like to be
too poor to
love 

He has this sky of compassed homes,
broken bones, feathers split to
ink wells but the ink has dried to stone;
in this westward view he spins while
collecting bombs that haven’t blown
(and the pins are now within,
like the quills beneath his skin).

I have the world hung on my fingertips,
spun like the gold of my hair
or the sun-strewn remnants 
of a weather-worn spider’s web.
I have the world at an arm’s length,
because just when I think I know my own strength,
I break something.

I don’t know what I’m saying, but
I like the way it sounds.
Some say I’ve got a way with words
but birds have me by leaps and bounds,
their artists’ brushed branches unheard
through whiskey’s sated whisper slur.

Tap-tap on my window’s glass,
such an early bird for cartridge brass;
he slips on trills when sirens call
and walks the plank to catch my fall.

There’s a robin on an ark;
his dreams feel real, but 
he doesn’t exist beyond my window.
I’ve broken him,
watched him break himself,
puppeteered his fall
with a click of my pen and a flick of the strings
– he used to dream of flying – 
but I hung the moon
and the rain still makes the water rise.

These words are vaguely cognizant
of blood and gore and prayer;
I have the world on it’s knees for me,
the birds and the bees for me, and yet
I don’t know what I’m saying but I
like the way it sinks.

  Read more »

eyes wide open
staring endlessly at the
cottage cheese icing
on my water stained ceiling 
I’ve got crack-caffeine insomnia
buzzing behind my lids
telling me to
get up
work out
make something of myself
because if I’m going to be awake
(can’t coax sleep in now)
I might as well be doing something
using time instead of wasting it staring 
unendingly
at the ceiling above my bed 
but instead
I lay Einsteining
graphing eons in the topography
of the underbelly of my roof
listing formulas for
hills and valleys of plaster
and refiguring them because
I might’ve missed something in the
rationalization of the complex fraction
that I have assigned the stain
left from spider guts 
smushed just overhead
in a fit of unbridled terror
and even now 
I’ve been reduced to
dictating leakage and
seepage and
see?
the ceiling is staring at 
me, too.

they are listing as a ship on spacious seas
with wind so harshly pulling back and 
ripping forward
a rewinding tape with
characters living life in reverse
because time is relative to the direction it’s played
and these poor pawns have
forfeited the remote.

they are heeling back
against the hiking straps
to right the submerged starboard side
bending their spines to dip far past the deck
so that if either of them look down
they would see the center board mere inches from breaking the surface.

the dialogue is read as murky words
spit across great expanses of earth that
are only counted as stage right and stage left
but are acted as though they are oceans apart
and when the director fails to yell cut
and the lights never fade to black
they realize they will relive
rewind playback pause
until they curl into the safety wings of their harbor home
roll up their sails 
and slip beneath the waves to live
as they were meant to. 

There’s a piece of me with
teeth, 
like razored diamonds.
Teeth that snap and bite
and yearn to tear. 
I have teeth because evolution
said I need them.

There’s a piece of me
- several, in fact -
that have no use for 
teeth.

In these places,
I am soft and rounded because
evolution said I must be
balanced,
the sharpness of my teeth evening 
the roundness of my calves. 

Evolution said I need
both.

And there’s a piece of me with
feet,
solid and beneath me.
Roots so I can stand my ground
and trunks to keep me upright.
Evolution said I must have
two
(in case one should fall off,
I must assume) 
and I intend to always
use them. 

I like to move
when I move
(evolution told me so). 

There’s a piece of me with
eyes,
I believe it’s so I see. 
But often I have come to find
that I have better peace of mind
when I am completely blind. 
Evolution said I need my eyes,
and evolution 
doesn’t lie. 

I have eyes so I can see
where I step and
step where I snap.

I have feet so I can walk 
where the wind is and 
tear a new path.

I have teeth so I can bite
where I need and
watch time lapse.

  Read more »

decomposing headache 
like a candle catches flame
slowly
flickering to life
behind 

May 
who lies
halfway shut
webs with threads stretched and cut
beat-beating tribal drums
smacking relentlessly against
skulls 

zip ties around 
wrists tied like a leash
on bad dogs
hair tied back
lids slack
vomiting down chests with
winter-mint breath and
friends of friends
and “it depends…”
and they whisper 

judgement
hammer falls on pavement
so sudden
one-sixty spent on
bad decisions
leading
toward

candles lighting
and
headaches coming
undone 

he sees the shades in a rainbow
in multiples of three
face tipped skyward
he’s stepping closer to the bandstand
with his arms spread wide
he’s jumping
swaying
to submerse himself in the music

he’s not alone 
here
though he usually is

the woman playing the upright bass is 
glaring at him
wondering how his
babysitters 
could allow him to become so out of control
how they could permit him to
bellow-shout
so close to the music 

but he’s beaming
the thirty-year-old man
glances back at his peers
some in wheelchairs
some drooling on their shirts
he’s beaming at them
and some are clapping for him

he’s not alone
not here
where his group has lunch on Tuesdays when it’s sunny
he’s not alone here

an older woman 
who has a badge on a lanyard
that says something along the lines of
“I’m in charge of these people”
or
“I care when no one else does”
stands and leaves the group of middle-aged men and women
to take the hands of the dancing man

and in front of god
in front of the glaring woman on the upright bass
and all the people spread across the green on this sunny Tuesday
she takes the hands of the dancing man and
she sways with him
face tipped skyward
she’s smiling so widely
laughing
with him
because he’s not alone
not here

he is prone to
self destruct
to sink his teeth into 
his one-track heart
drop a quarter
spin the knob
kick to start

he tends to push away his feelings
wraps his wrists in cellophane
call girls names that
aren’t their names
to pretend they’re not
the same thing he hates
and he
darkens his eyes 
without thinking

he likes the way
soft-skinned boys
shine in moonlight
wind weighing in on his
conflict
accusing eyes cast down
too quiet to confront
too entranced to remain
unnoticed 

he curses his blood
for rising to his face
for pounding through his veins
for fleeing his upstairs
and flooding his downstairs 
he curses his blood for its 
treachery 
(he’s not like that) 

he swears to god that his first kiss
was a fluke
was nothing
they were two ships in the night
but instead of passing invisibly 
they crashed
and he’s sinking
and it was an accident 
(and it was a mistake) 

and he says that his second kiss
felt different but
it was the same thing
his mind was playing tricks on him
swirling dream and reality
like cream into coffee
until it went down easy enough to
swallow 

  Read more »

Dear 2012,

Still no flying cars. I know, this was promised to us by 1990, but alas - cars are still firmly planted on the ground. That's not to say we haven't advanced, of course. I'm pretty sure there are only three or four petroleum fuel stations still up and running in Chittenden County, the rest were replaced with solar powered Quik-Charge stations a couple years back. 

Anyway, I knew you were wondering what this mystical future would hold, and so here I am to tell you: Vermont hasn't really changed. We still hold the record for largest cowbell performance, still call them 'creemees', and still march along to our own eco-friendly drum. And we still haven't built a Target. (What a disappointment.)

That aside, there is one major thing we've discovered (which I'm sure you've realized at this point). A woman in Winooski invented time-traveling postage! It's really expensive to go too far back, but I figured that you might want to know that even though we were supposed to live on Mars and have flying cars by now, we don't. So don't get your hopes too far up.

Sincerely, 
2035

PS: Cabot did eventually change their label back. Yay!

The community of Essex High School experienced a terrible tragedy this past Saturday: the death of 17 year old Brad Nadeau. Brad was a friend to many, and his loss has affected the student body of EHS and beyond. His memory will not be forgotten, and those friends and family left in wake of this tragedy must be supported in their grieving. Please use this space to remember Brad, to share your memories of him and your thoughts. Use keyword Nadeau so we can all see the pieces.

A memorial service for Brad was on Friday, May 4th. If you wish to reflect on the service, feel free to comment below or create a blog with Nadeau as the keyword.

i like to take pictures of things i can't spell because
i like the way they look on paper
no words

i like to write about things i can't see because
it's these things that make the world better
and it's these
ideas
conepts
dreams
of apprehension
variable immersion that bring me down
but not to earth
further
deeper still than the deepest sleep

i can't draw but
if i could i'd draw the things i don't know how to say

as it is, i'm not a photographer
(although i did take a nice picture
just once)

and i'd like to be a writer
(i've heard i need a good
teacher)

and my drawings are 
few
far between
mediocre
(i try)

still
i'd like to give you the things i can't touch

There's a life outside this place.

Long driving, tires spinning, foreign speaking, foreign eating, camping, fighting, sighing, singing, kissing, stretching, sleeping, breathing. We went west, once. We went to Wyoming and it was beautiful and perfect and I've been there, sure, but I didn't (couldn't) stay. We came back to green hills and lush forests, we came back to Vermont because we live here.

Planes take off and crash back down and don't come back and fly forever, but mine never has. It's always smooth and easy and I've been north and south and east and west and none of it is the same but none of it is any different. Alaska isn't a winter wonderland and Texas isn't a western wasteland. (But they also kind of are.)

Alaska has long roads plotted against sunsetting inlets whereas Texas has broad interstates slicing speckled horizons. They're both significantly American. Alaska likes people who know themselves and Texas likes people who know Texans. Separation is equal in both these places. Anchorage is to Alaska as Austin is to Texas. Not the same. Different pieces of the same people, but definitely separate and and only partially equal. The moon looks different but the sky looks the same. Everything occupies the same cage and some parts fight it while others lie quietly. Dynamic.

I've been north and south and east and west and there's a life there, did you know? I've been to the corners of a compass and swung back around. I've held the wheels as they've turned, I've had the worm at the bottom of the bottle, and it's all different. It's all the same.

I'll be surprised if there's anything left when I'm done with the world.

The first thing she said was, "There are rules."

She went on to list them, of course, but it was those three words that met me head on, gave me chills, made me wonder if I was cut out to be here. Rules are things that limit and structure, and that's not bad, no, but I arrived on a chariot of writer-y things that generally don't take structure well. Rules weren't on my flight itinerary.

But I'm generally one to like rules, and even if I don't like them, I like to break them. I'm an optimist. I like to like things.

As it turns out, there really aren't rules. Young Writer's Project was duely described as the "writer badlands", a lawless space of creativity and community and a bunch of other things that are listed in a room adjacent to the one I'm in.

See, I'm still on my chariot of writer-y things, I've still got my creative sword and I'm still swinging anaphora. If there's structure here, it's because I built it.

The first thing she said was, "There are rules," and I like to think I've broken a couple.

She's spinning
swirling
cyclic dancing
laughing as she's undermining
all her chances
slip through her hands and
she's still smile -
smiling.

Hunting
hurting
rhythmic burning
up and under iron churning
she sees hell
too far to tell
and she's still smile -
smiling.

Loving
drugging
pear tree smuggling
through the leaves
and water bubbling
and lying there
above the ground
floating
holding
not a sound
she tips up
her head on hold
and she's still smile -
smiling.

Plucking
clucking
back-woods fucking
but she's too gone
to know it's wrong
her fight is lost
the stars are crossed
and she's still smile -
smiling.

all I have 

is my love of love

soft touches

shy glances

compliments 

and consequences 

and to those of you who have tasted it

relish it

remember it

relinquish your grasp on reality

all I have 

is my love of love

ten fingers

ten toes

two eyes

a nose

if you can hold it

it is real

if you have built it

it is yours Read more »

One time,

she tried to write a novel.

It turned out more 

like a journal.

Don't tell me that you love me
just because you like the feeling
of being in love.

Two hearts
never thump to the beat of
one drum,
and as long as we're lying face-to-face, we
may as well fill this space
with the secrets that made us
come undone.

Leave the chocolates at the door when you
slam it shut;
I'll need the sugar just to keep
my eyes wide,
and the tear stains down my face would
like to be dried
with the shirt off your back.

So if you'd be so kind
as to dry my eyes,
and leave the chocolates by the door;
come back later:

I'll've passed out on the floor, Read more »