Free Sunset

On the corner of 40th and Opal in Oakland is a gorgeous mural painted by the amazing Kristi Holohan honoring my poem "Free Sunset." It's been up for months but I'm only now posting it here and for the first time with the complete text of the poem. It was originally part of the project Temescal InSitu.

Free Sunset

Lift my chin to the clouds, the heavens, the clouds

And wish or pray to wish for rain

To wash out the silence, the silence

He left me, behind the noise of highways

And trains at the intersection of 40th and Telegraph.

Dirty foot walks the broken streets

Dirty street breaks the feet of boys without socks

Boys without socks or gone to jail:

Boys without sunsets.

Boys with sunsets on the other side of the wall.

Broken sidewalks. Broken hearts.

Broken hearts.

Sunsets are free, he says

Once again outside my paid-for window

Sunsets are free

Behind the lines, a steeple, the lines

Once again paid for, this view

This view all the better on the hill

Outside the walls where children know death

More death than I

Ever will.

Walls between free sunsets and children not free

Children already gone

Past my share of grieving

And yours.

Your sunset's free, he says.

Meg Claudel

To Mr. Howard

This piece was originally published on the now-defunct Journal of Modern Post website. I thought I'd post it here to give it back the possibility of an audience.

To Mr. Howard:
A Scary Thing Happened on the Way to Work

Meg Claudel

From: Maud Hamilton
Date: Th March 03, 2005 2:33p.m. US/Pacific
To: choward@jacobswidgets.com
Subject: a scary thing happened on the way to work

Dear Mr. Howard:

I know this is unexpected, but a scary thing happened on the way to work this morning. When I got here you asked me, as you always do, how I was. I said I was fine, but I'm not fine. I got really scared this morning on the way here, and I'm afraid that I haven't gotten much done thinking about it, I'm sorry. I'll miss the deadline certainly now.

Walking to work in the fog always makes me pensive. I love it actually. I love the coolness of the fog. I love the privacy of the fog. The fog was so thick this morning, and the early morning so quiet and so dark, that for several minutes at a time I truly felt alone. I couldn't really see more than the sidewalk immediately in front of me, the traffic lights when I got close enough, and the headlights of the few cars circulating so early. But, those lights and cars were few. Between them were long moments of pure fog and pure quiet.

You've always counseled me against walking, and I took it as genuine kind concern and walked anyway, like I always have, all my adult life, despite all the kind, concerned counsel. I feel safer in the early morning than at any other time, as if I think all the bad guys are never awake that early. It's probably really false security, but so far so good. I wasn't scared about not being able to see around me or about being alone. But, feeling like I was in a world all my own made me think about a world all my own. I thought, if I were the only person in the world, what would be important to me? I don't mean being the only person in the sense that I'd have to fend for myself and have no company, that I'd lose everyone I loved. No, I mean what if my world were about what was important to me? If the world still existed, but had no expectations of me, because I was in my own world, the only one who counted?

What I found was that the real world would still be important to me: the spirit of the desert's rich colors, the soothing sound of the ocean, the adventurousness of wisteria, the desire sparked by the smell of freshly brewed coffee, the poetry of city lights on a swift- flowing river, the seduction of John Coltrane's saxophone, the depth and diversity of David Mitchell's stories, the proof of the existence of perfection seen in my niece's clever smile, the proof of the strength of life itself seen in my nephew's generous energy, the sense of completion when my lover touches the small of my back.

I also found that enclosed in my world of fog, with nothing but myself, there was still much right there that was important to me: the shade of mauve when I closed my eyes, the sounds in the silence, the stimulating chill on the exposed skin of the back of my neck, my own rumination while fogged in, my ability to remember perfectly the first verse of Song of Myself and to call upon it at any need, the letters I write in my head but never on paper, my wonder at how fog exists, the love that I will always feel for the cat who died when I was ten, my desire to forge ahead and learn something completely new.

What I didn't find, Mr. Howard, while alone in the fog, was any importance at all related to the deadline I am not meeting today, or our fiscal goals, or the VP's visit next month, or, frankly, any of our products.

What scared me, Mr. Howard, this morning, on the way to work, is that when it comes down to it, the one thing in my life to which I give the most of my time and my energy holds absolutely no importance at all when I am alone in the dark fog.

It is for this reason, and this reason only, that I am giving you two weeks notice of my resignation. I would like to thank you for all the support you have given me over the years, and all that you have taught me. You are an ideal supervisor, and I wish you all the best.

Sincerely,

Maud Hamilton
Project Manager
Jacob's Widgets

First published poem!

Okay, so I guess I've got to start calling myself a poet now. :)

Word Riot posted Blue Day today!

http://www.wordriot.org/template_2.php?ID=1644

Nice way for the universe to wish me a happy fortieth! (shhh).

I wrote this in BREW, workshopped it with Temescal Writers, and got feedback from both Pat Schneider and Angela. So it's a collective effort for sure.

Rain Jack on the Dead Mule!

The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature has just posted Rain Jack.

Don't miss the Southern Legitimacy Statement
Scroll down to January 8th.

Fun!

Doris Lessing Wins Nobel Prize in Literature

Here is the NYT article.

I think I'd be only slightly more thrilled if I'd won it myself!

Patrick's Surfaces XIII

I didn't know how to get back in.

Her writing was too slow. I was desperate to leave the apartment, suddenly smelly and dank, wanting color, wanting danger, wanting her. Imorin. Finally her true name. Imorin. "How?" I kept repeating, "How?" Aloud. With my voice. To the book. To the book, as if the book could hear. Yet, I could hear the book. I could hear Imorin through her words, on the page, which weren't coming fast enough onto the second-to-last page.

You'll have to start again, she wrote.

You'll have to begin at the beginning and read through, not live through, but read through, what you've already lived. We'll be waiting for you. You must finish the book or there is no hope for us. You must live through an ending, or there is no hope for us, she wrote.

So, I sat, where I was, on the floor, and began to read. Beginning with page one:

Wemoreland was in danger of disappearing, of being taken over by rules and constraints, by black and white, by definitions and normalcy and by all the other things that stifle an imagination.

I couldn't imagine having wanted to read this as a younger me. I couldn't imagine wanting to read this this morning. But, the words changed, before my eyes, blurred and came back together as Zachary, it's okay. It's the same story, but you are not the same Zachary. Just come in.

And so I did, I sat and read and I remembered as I read, not the words, no, none of the words, but the story, the steps of the castles, the sharks in the moat, the silver forest, the caves where we met Snate, the bear who led us to the other side, who introduced us to Neptine who guided us through the night to the sire of Kintet and who never left the story. Through adventure and tragedy, with the monkeys, on the boat, rescued and lost and rescuing, trying to put Patrick's puzzles together, to follow the story with his clues, until page 253, where we ran through blue elms and then I left Imorin on the red wood bridge. Page 254 was completely blank, but I was no longer holding the book.

Patrick's Surfaces XII

The book now seemed more real than the room. The blue elms and red wooden bridge, the nasty gnomes and the worker monkeys, the danger, the passion, the puzzles, the hunt, Patrick's mind and Patrick's power, now, suddenly, with the coming of one clear memory, seemed more real than the front door, the computer, the desk chair, the empty whiskey bottle, the paper and glue and ink of the book itself.

I repeated my question to the unreal room, "How?" and was answered by nothing.

I opened the book to the last page and read:

You cannot read the last page of this book without reading the first and next pages of this book because the last page does not exist until you've created it from the second-to-last, the second-to-last from the third-to-last, the third-to-last from the fourth-to-last etc, starting with creating the second page from the first. Close the book and start at the beginning, dear reader, or this book cannot exist. P.W.

That was the last page of the book. I turned it to the right, opening the book to the third and second-to-last pages. The third was blank. The second had one line:

Thank you, Zachary, for coming back.

And then it had another line after it:

I'm sorry that you had to be torn about so.

And then another line:

I'm sorry it came to that.

The lines continued to appear, one at a time, the next after reading the last:

We were desperate. We needed you so badly. It took so much work , so much time, so many readers and their inventions, before we could find a way to you. By then, you had forgotten us. You would not have believed us had we shown ourselves to you as you had known us.

I could hear her voice in the words I read.

Patrick's Surfaces XI

Why are you running?

Why are we running?

Or is it not me, but Patrick? Just some generic, ageless white boy with you.

Would help if I knew what Patrick looked like. Would help if I knew what the fuck I'd be doing in that book. IN that book.

I was addressing her although she was no longer there - both her vehicles to presence, the computer and the book, had made dents in my door. The book, though, was still intact. There, across the room on top of bits of white plastic and bent metal. I found myself addressing the book, addressing her fleeing image on the book, and even with my head in my hands her blond and blue were facing me, running towards me, holding Patrick's hand - my hand? - running towards me through impossible blue elms.

"Bitch," I said to the running girl in my head. "Get out."

The silence was her laughing, her laughing with sad shoulders, fightless eyes. "Fool," the silence said. "Fool."

And then I remembered. I finally remembered. "Fool," she had said, laughing. The whole scene came back.

She had been on the middle of a red, wood footbridge, long hair and white gauzy skirts so fiercely wind-blown that it looked like the river was plucking her downward. One of her hands was gripping the one-rope railing. The other was on her hip. I was close enough to hear her calm despite the wind, but not close enough to touch her.

"We may only be in Patrick's mind, Zachary. Foolish Zachary," she'd said. "But, that means you and I cannot exist without him, cannot exist just each other. Stop your dreaming silly young Zach. You are here to get to the end of the story. Not to start a new one. I can't leave Wemoreland. And when you reach the end, all you can do is leave. Alone."

I remembered the feeling of confusion. The realest thing when I walked onto that bridge was the girl before me who had come to the end of so many chapters with me, partners, companions, her land-smarts, bone strength, night's eye, and owl's intuition complementing perfectly my knowledge of game-narrative, of strategy, of planning for the unexpected with my defenses always up. But, his real thing, she was reminding me, had no reality. The confusion turned to anger, the jealously turned to hatred and I left her on the bridge and swore to myself to leave both her and Patrick to suffer forever without resolution, without an ending.

With the confidence of this memory, with the relief of remembering, I walked over, picked up the book, saw us fleeing through blue elms, and heard her say, "Free us, Zachary."

"How?" I replied, to the book.