The Exchange Continues

From: caleb@xxxxx
Subject: Absurd and beautiful
Date: November 20, 2007 2:58:04 PM EST (CA)
To: ccroteau@gordongroup.com

Ah. Ah ha!

It's funny when all these stories start to sound the same. It's funny, it's not sad. This I know because I have seen glimpses of the Truth. I have had visions, by turns splendid and dull, in the smoke at the back of the bar, by the pool table. I have had visions of chariots and so on. I have had visions of schoolbuses. My hands are alive with visionary tactics. My legs are alive. My tactics are surprising. My thumb, bruised and cut from being caught between boxes at the warehouse, balances a tiny world, complete with oceans and mountains; and the small hairs on my hand balance tiny stars.

I walked to your place because I was lonely and it was cold, and I did not feel like going home. I walked to your apartment with a song in my heart which was untranslatable. The universe of my song was established in the early 1900's. Part of it died with Kurt Cobain. Part of it died with the Titanic. Part of it died while watching the movie Titanic. It is a much smaller universe now, but it still breathes and beckons. It still creates, though what is created is admittedly of questionable value.

I long for the great and silent spirit to speak once more from the void, or from the cap of the mountain, or from the great, distant Glory Hall. So speak once more, I implore you.

This is religious music. This is poetry set to a religious tune. My stories all sound the same, because I am trapped between the collapsed structures of an ABSURD and BEAUTIFUL life. Or, a GOOD and PURPOSEFUL life. Or just a fucking life.

*

Sitting on a park bench under a tree
To get out of the rain

The wind becomes so strong
That the high branches bend low
Almost touching my face

Or

Sitting on a bench
Out of the rain

The wind is strong
The tree bends low
To touch my face

Or

On a bench
Beneath a tree
The wind is strong
The branches low

Or

Bench
Rain
Wind
Branches
Face