In Search of Concinnity

Autumn came late this year.

It is in the new year when I am writing that which should have come in September--the turning of a new leaf, or at least the shedding of the old. I have not gone anywhere. I have simply found that I must cast aside that which was--momentum, initiative, discipline, transformation. There's a certain irony to having the first year of stability ever in recent memory and knowing that the way that I have lived will not work for the year to come.

Autumn also came far too soon this year.

The Year of Discipline never had a real end; it came to a standstill with my disdain of the world of literature, where amateur and professional alike have no place for me, and I asked, "what is the point of my writing if it has no place?"

Here is where my writing has lived for over a decade, and in that time, I have not cultivated a widespread readership of strangers; nor have I given its location to many that I count as friends or family. I am my own most fervent reader, and I have had to answer that question of the purpose of my writing.

It's quite fitting to understand that what I have written, what I have always tried to write has never been about a claim to fame, or being a voice that people would think worth listening to, or to serve myself. There is no glory, no self-satisfaction in having the worst moments of my life become my defining stories, and yet they stand as a testament to who I am and who I have always been.

Nobody prepares to grieve, to be ready to let go of someone you were ready to hold tightly to for all your days, but this might be as close as it gets. This is the story of survival, that I have proven my preparation for these moments. For those around me, I must be inhuman so that they may be human.

Original date of writing: June 2019.

“I can only hope that one day you will see it fitting to be a part of my different story.” 

It’s June. 

This is a different June than the one that I left off at, and I’ve come to recognize that you have always occupied a space in the different story; you’ve just never known what that story is. 

I used to imagine that the sequel to this story would be one that I would tell you in person. That from that moment onward, things would be different. But that isn’t meant to be, is it? I’m writing this because I will never get that chance. 

I know anyone who disagrees means well, but that hope is not coming. This is my different story. 

Different means a story where there aren’t even happy intermediates, let alone a happy ending. Different means a story that has impossible dilemmas. Different means a realm of existence that I live in by myself, because there is no alternative. 

I say different because it’s not something that people have seen, but to me, it has always been the same story. It will always be the same story, and there are no good ways to describe it without being viewed as one of the many things that I’ve been ostracized for, but with the sparse remnants of my sanity, I will try. 

I’ve lived most of my life without the prospect of happiness, crystallizing into the belief that there is nothing to gain, but everything to lose. There is no rock bottom. There is always further to fall. I just don’t know where the next depth is. 

Somewhere in the wreckage, there lies an understanding of what my life is like, and why there is no capacity for change. Some part of me knows that the only way is forward, even if it goes down forever. Some part of me knows what the answer is, why it will not come, why it pertains to you, and why I can never ask that of you. 

I hope to at least include what I will never say to you: I love you. 

Some part of me wants to believe that when I wake I will find you waiting, that it will be better from then on, but it won’t be that way.

The boy who used to pick up this same pencil was told he would never be a good writer, To stick instead to math and science, The things he was supposed to be good at, And here he is writing on writing.

The discontinuous function of my writing does not have a place in this world, No family of similar graphs to draw attention to Of the social media phenomenon or the literary award winner So I am told that my writing is lacking, And I hold them with the same regard as the rest of my childhood critics who cannot hold a candle to my work, Perhaps stricken with dyslexia, Embodying a poetic ars(e).

The legacy of my writing here has been to show who I am for the reader that needs to know who I am and what I do-- That one phase of my writing might be uninspiring, technical; Another presents the polymathic principled pursuit of perfected poetry, And still another will drive in the jagged edge so readers might feel a shattered soul--and be thankful it is not their own.

I have forced myself to write poetry every day for years on end, concentrated it into a still-elusive pursuit of happiness, buried words in notebooks offline, reorganized the years of my life.

I have played the fool, written love songs, carved despair into stories, mastered craft and form and rhythm, constructed poems of topics that have no business in literature.

I measure greatness and the rate of change to my origin, and it is presented here, through every forgettable free-verse, every choppy rhyme, every uninspiring shallow platitude leading to now, and not to another's ego.

Intertwined branches, Broken from different trees, Still support new life.

It sounded in the spotlight of a single suspended star, Making meaning of museum memories of Manhattan, meanwhile featuring us futilely fighting feelings of falling for a friend.

It hummed at the head of the High Line, Ringing in the red sun rising over the river. Attraction arrived at after all this anticipation.

It lilted lightly in our linked literature lessons, Personal pulpit of partners presenting proclamations of passion, Subject I still supervise scholars’ studies in.

It harmonized by happenstance with the heartfelt hit We belted boldly with the Backstreet Boys, A nostalgic nocturne of the notable number, “No Goodbyes.”

It warbled in one wonderous wedding waltz, Four full notes framing a faultless, flowing fallaway to fanfare, Invoking infinite intimacy in its intricate intervals.

It serenades us as you slip softly to sleep beside me. I expect an equivalent ending with an encore, But it is hypnopompia.

She has never heard this song— She will never hear this song.

We said, "Come, let us build our own world together," System and surroundings in isolation. And it was good enough, was it not? After all, we each had put in some part to make this construct called love.

In cinders, expansion was growth. In rime, movement was progress. When it came time to examine the result, We understood that we never made it as far as we imagined.

You can produce warmth from work and work from warmth, But without input, You will have no more than what you began with.

The division of spaces created clarity, but it was really only laying metaphorical foundations for something more. Architecture was a tumultuous, transient year, but it afforded me a blueprint for a longer-term vision of permanent structure. Unfortunately, it is not yet time to put permanence and stability as the main focus as I enter a second transient year.

I am dedicating this year to permanence where I can achieve it, a space that can be moved with me when I physically move from place to place. Whereas the Year of Architecture aimed to separate necessity from desire, this year aims to organize those spaces further. The goals are consistency in performance and a higher level of integrity in matching words to actions.

Taken together, this will be the Year of Discipline.

Did you fight hard enough to hold on to your home? Not the one with your name in crayon on the hanging drawing and a room preserved like a shrine for the Christmas homecoming, the one where it smells like cookies, but you know that it smells like those cookies, that nobody else can match. No, we outgrew those and began to desire our names on leases, our names in lights, our names exchanged in vows for all eternity-- our names take precedence over our nameless neighbors, who once might have lived down the road in a home just like ours. Would you have torn it all down and justified it by arguing over artwork too hideous, a bed too small, or a food not made to a golden standard?

We take spaces with grand plans and a belief that here we can build something that is good, and worthwhile, and lasting, but it is easy to walk away, and step into room we believe was prepared for us elsewhere. The space remains, but abandonment creates a void where someone once wanted to call home.

Here ends the Year of Architecture.

every fire is in search of fuel.

the collision of two cinders might produce sparks and call it love, believing that the joining of their two worlds produces something more-- after all, is it not bigger now?

tell me how they will go the distance when there was no work to be done, only the expectation of a sudden appearance of an already-assembled apparatus, like waking up one day expecting the sun in the sky or a car on the corner without consideration of what makes those things happen.

sometimes, the sum of two parts is exactly the sum of two parts, other times greater, but maybe it is not addition, but competition between equals racing to the finish line.

the melding of two lukewarm souls does not produce a hotter flame, only an anticipated anthology of ashes.

i don't know when i became unbothered by rain-- maybe on a desperate day a decade ago, when shields were raised and that battle still lost, and i could not believe that someone could love me, a temporary love evaporated in the clarity of summer sunlight and self-reflection.

so call it foolish fearlessness when i walked miles beneath the cumulonimbus, and i stood with no ward against pinpricks caught in passing headlights-- a power to kill, perhaps, but certainly one to ruin a mood or day.

my mother makes it out to be the worst thing in the world to weather a storm without cover, but i disagree.

ritualize the fall of water, and it is a baptism, a shower. immortalize it, and the ensuing drought ends life.

Doing nothing meant I would never have her. It meant she would be happy.

I’m just curious, what’s your inspiration for your poems?

They’re really thoughtful & well-written!

The inherent flaw of romantic love is that it will never be the epitome of what love is.

I am no less guilty in thinking that it could be; rather, I am more guilty than most in my admission that I have only despair--I will never have what I want. That's really what heartbreak is about, isn't it? That we wanted and desired, and we were denied that which we wanted and desired. Even when we lie to ourselves and say that we are happy with the simulacrum of love, it is to say that we have what we want, even though we don't have what we need, and when that is lost, we shed tears over losing what we wanted.

integrity: doing the same thing in different contexts. I ask one favor of him: That he loves you the way I never had a chance to.

infinity: doing the same thing in different contexts, without end. And I will let her do all these things if it makes her happy, Because she doesn’t deserve unhappiness because of me. That is my burden to bear, And I will always choose to bear that for her as well.

insanity: doing the same thing in different contexts, without end, and expecting different results. So when I told her I wanted nothing for myself, It was a way to say, “I want what you do not want to give me and what I never will believe I have the right to ask for,” But beyond myself, I wanted her to be happy.

A sequel to Snatching Starlight.

The man is dead.

Would you put your faith in any other to last ten billion years Or your lifetime To support your endeavors against entropy?

In our lives we take for granted the star at the center, Even as we peer further back in time to find that every other one could be just like it, But surrounding them is barrenness.

We are averse to rogue planets whose inhabitants desperately desire for someone to save them, for their gravity might disrupt ours just the slightest. When they disappear from view, we think of them like distant stars-- Fate uncertain for eternity, not for us to know, not our concern.

Those stars will eventually die, too, But not because of our inaction.

I once believed when your fragments fell upon me that there was an alignment of nature that drove opposite but kindred spirits together. After all, your droplets were as numerous as my grains of sand. In a vast expanse, we would be the same composition of a sum greater than greater than individual parts,

Except that's where the story strays like the streams and rivulets that never came.

How else would I know how to dry your tears? People forget where deserts come from, As if arid wasteland is life's first choice, But what if I am just tired of growing to die again, Telling myself there are still seeds left for tomorrow? I was a forest, too.

If we are to believe that our environments form us, It is not always the proximity of another that decides who we become. The sky has been ever-present and out of reach, But you? It's your absence that has shaped me the most.

III. I've been told perhaps I was meant for a different era, And I don't know what that means, Whether my distinction is first, last, or only, So I assume last, the humble assertion that I am not special, only the slowest to stumble upon an existence already lived out by others.

II. If we are stars or their ashes living in a universe everywhere contaminated with metals to subsist on, There is no place left to only live off the lightest elements in forged fashion of fusion, But maybe there is an antithesis to the alignment of stars to make a place devoid of their remains.

I. There is a star beyond purview that should shine brighter than all others, an impostor who may answer the mystery: Radiance emerges from ever-growing darkness, And at its end, the birth of a galaxy.