My grandmother’s yard…; Rocktober 08, 2007 — Photo by Me.

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I’ve lost every game of
Russian Roulette
I’ve ever played
Lost for so long
I can’t remember winning
If I could
I’d never get up
Because the only thing worse
Than losing
Everything
Is remembering
What it’s like
To win.

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What if… what if it’s all about circles? Every time I think I’m walking in a straight line I find myself walking past the same marker I thought I had passed for the last time five years ago and ten years ago and twenty years ago but there it comes again… and here it is and now my hand just brushed against the same spot on the same marker one more time. But it’s not just one marker, I seem to end up passing all of them. Over and over again, passing the marker for every memory and every person and every experience I’ve tried to forget and those I so desperately try to remember.

We surround ourselves with evidence of the markers we want to remember in photos and gifts. But sometimes, in an effort to avoid the marker, we take the photos and letters and gifts and pack them in shoe boxes and store them in closets. And other times, when we have no photos or letters or gifts, we do the best we can by storing the memory of the marker in our memory. Or in a poem or a blog.

This has been my year for ghosts. For markers. We all have them. You have them. Maybe you’re walking through a shopping mall thinking about books or the magnificent ass on the woman walking in front of you and there she is with the friend who never liked you. Your marker. The woman you would have married. The woman you haven’t seen in five years or thought of in two. There she is walking fifteen-feet from from you. Your marker. Now… react. Now.

They’re not all people. Markers are things. Things which remind you of the things which may have been better for your mind to have forgotten. The easy ones like birthdays are so easy to dismiss for so long, but eventually you look back and realize so many have gone by and you’re not another year older but ten. The hardest ones are like the first time you inadvertently pass the house where you were sexually abused and you have to say to yourself “oh… right”. Now… react. React now.

Holy Christ, did I ever have dreams? What happens when you finally reach a marker that proves you had Dreams? What happens when you’ve recognized a marker that reminds you of the things you wanted to do? What happens when you reach a marker which brings memories of who you wanted to be? The man you wanted to be? What happens when you see the return address on a letter you’ve just received and it’s from a marker eighteen years old, and one you’ve put into a shoe box in your closet. What happens is you have to say to yourself “Holy Christ… I did have dreams…”

And Now… react. Now.

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…since november fourteenth, 2006.

“You burn things when there’s no going back. How much of
yourself have you had to burn away to be
the person you are today? Because baby, my body
is ash and my mind is still smoking.”

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