One of these days

The door shudders at the hinges, and
overhead the pale thumbnail moon glows,
matches the weeks-old snow--
and my feet trample through it like it fell
just last night and stuck there,
across the church parking lot--and there even,
spread out in a moonlight quilt over our bare backyard,
hiding the dormant lawn and the apple tree's rising roots,
the frozen wooden garden boxes strapped with rusted braces,
the little tin shed and the damp dresser
with the missing leg and the loose drawers,
the old cobwebbed lawnmower and its dull, exposed blades.
Overhead the cable wires droop down heavy with white
and reach for the dark solid soil hidden under
our field of winter.
It knows just about everything, this omniscient season does,
it squeezes through every crevice and permeates the world wide
with its frost and taste of cold.

I walk past the blue and black trash bins
(through the little rickety steel gate that overgrows
with olive-colored vines in the summer).
The neighbors' light is on;
the baby cries and I watch through the fogged kitchen window
as his mother shoulders him up,
wraps him in his yellow-and-white-striped blanket
and hefts him high. She smiles and coos, walks
to calm him, to protect him from the
deep hibernation outside.
Something steams in a shiny pot on the burner,
and his father eats dinner on a brown leather easy chair
in front of the television screen,
flickering sports highlights.

So I lay down out back there under the naked apple tree,
all wet and cold and bare, stiffening in that windless clear,
watching the line of icicles that parade across the eaves
single file like deep translucent roots of ice
or clear January speartips made by the trickling warmth
of the slow southern sun in the daytime.
They are bent downward bound for the street,
bound to break loose one of these days.

I want my arms and legs to just freeze up
and stop being me, so I can quit feeling cold
and feel something else for a change,
something that takes more than sensation
or season or temperature.
Something crying like a fetus at the walls of the womb.
--Let me out.
--Let me out!
--Let me in.

I am ready to begin.

The hero

So I played Guitar Hero from 11 till 1 tonight, with Mike and his brother James' house in Pleasant Grove. Just got home. Ran over an already-destroyed sheep in the middle of the road on the way there. It disgusted me. There were this huge massive lump of white in the middle of the road; I thought it was snow except for all the red splattered all around. It got up in my undercarriage I think too cause later I was smelling burnt lamb from inside my engine and I was sickened. I drove over these frozen drifts of snow made from the plows to try and clean my car off. On the way home though the whole creature was gone, all evidence removed (hallelujah). Some poor soul had to clean it up. A cop maybe. I was picturing it in my mind, who had to deal with it. Maybe they hired a tow truck driver to do the dirty work. Or some guy with a plow attached to the front of his truck who could run it off the road into the empty snowy lot.

And I drank a Coke Zero, relished my aspartame and wished it would go away. I am trying to distance myself.

On the way home I saw these intense fireball (or bolide) to the west. It was the best one I've ever seen. I watched again outside once I got home and it was nice and beautiful out. The moon is a little over half-full and so it's navy blue all around, but it's winter after all so I can identify lots of stars and they seem so familiar to me, still so close to home. Kinda makes it feel more like home here, at least because the stars are so similar. (Nothing beats driving at 3 a.m. across Nevada though, when there's no moon.)

Anyway, I have to get up way early to beat the bookstore rush and here I am in a cold house wasting time while the sky's probably already getting lighter and I haven't even got into bed yet.

Audio: Brand New | Mew (still)
Video: Open Season
Text: Rule of the Bone

My words of the day: exegesis, repudiate, iconoclastic

We've built our own sun

So over the break I recorded a song of mine on Joey's equipment. It's one I wrote over a year ago, but I just thought it would be fun to get it down. Though I think I have to re-record the vocals cause I botched a line, but you may not notice. Check it out here:

We've built our own sun

Obviously it's called We've built our own sun. And while I'm at it, I may as well give a shout out to Box.net--a cool website that gives you free file hosting/storage, and that's where my song is for now. Sorry no streaming. Oh well.

Note that this might be reposted all over the place, so I apologize ahead of time if you see it more than once.

Deviance

I had a good break. Guess I'll post a lot more about that later. But for now: I got a DeviantArt site. Check it out here:

http://mooncowboy.deviantart.com

Not much there yet that you haven't already seen.

Audio: Mew | And The Glass Handed Kites
Video: Night At The Museum
Text: Rule Of The Bone | Russell Banks