My footprints
are washed from the sand
by the desert wind.

I stand at the foot of a shattered statue a fellow traveler once described as 'two vast and trunkless legs of stone", hand holding my shemaugh over my mouth to keep out the sand.

I come
-- something between a pilgrim and a ghost --
to look on the works of the king of kings and despair.

The wind whistles through the legs and over the half buried head which lies tilted up out of the sand near the statue's base.

I sit in the spare shade of the legs,
as I do every year,
and let my eyes wander about the empty desert, taking some comfort in the shared company of the forgotten monument.

I pray to a nameless god, the phantom lord of all forgotten things, that something of Ozymandius endures.

Untitled Poem

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Fall has come.
I sit at my desk
in the dark
wrapped in blankets

A pale light
casts my face as marble.
I read from Thomas De Quincey's
Confessions of an Opium Eater.

"My dreams were accompanied
by deep-seated anxiety
and gloomy melancholy,
such as are wholly incommunicable by words.
I seemed every night
to descend,
into chasms and sunless abysses,
depths below depths,
from which it seemed hopeless
that I could ever reascend."

With an opium pipe,
I could slip deep into reveries
transcend,
roiling back
to sit beside De Quincey
as he sweats,
tossing and turning in his bed,
trying, failing
to wean himself
from the drug that is killing him.
I would hold his hand
in the dark - and tell him
he isn't alone.
Perhaps, together,
we might find some way
out of the abyss.


It's been four years since China, but it seems like a lifetime. I feel like I'm reading the words of a stranger. The years I was in China were some of the darkest of my life, but you wouldn't know it from reading my blog. I was an idealist. An optimist. There was always a silver lining, even when my lifefelt like it was falling apart in the summer of my second year, and I was drinking half a bottle of rum every other day. I remember coming home one afternoon from the grocery with a bottle of rum, a jar of peanut butter, and a loaf of Chinese bread, and thinking, "God damn, buddy, you are drinking waaaay too much. This here is the diet of a man who is making poor decisions." I remember laughing, and thinking with that foggy logic of a man with a perpetual hangover"But at least you'll have learned to sympathize with those who have drinking problems."
What the hell happened to that guy? I miss him. He wrote terrible poetry and reveled in it. He wasn't ashamed by his love of writing or books. He believed the world could be made into a better place if just one person was willing to believe in goodness hard enough. He wasn't nearly as friendly or as outgoing as I am, but he wasn't half as bitter either. How can I be bitter or cynical? I'm only thirty. Surely I haven't seen enough of life to be bitter by thirty.
I need the good parts of that guy back.

It's two in the morning. I should be finishing up a paper for my Romantic Literature class tomorrow, but instead, I'm reading through my old travel blog and this writing blog. God I miss them.

I wrote here. It doesn't matter whether it was good writing or bad. I loved it. That was enough.

I think I'm going to write here again. May whatever is out there give me the time and the will to write here again. It's been three years since I last posted. May it not be three years until I post again.

I wrote this in response to a book I recently finished. It needs to go through a few more drafts. The writing is a bit sloppy and the end is far too angsty.

However, I must admit I found the angst hilariously delightful. Every time I read the end I burst into a fit of giggling.


I’ve learned to be afraid
The words that flew like winged ships
Now languish, bound and staid
Wild words which ran with screams and howls
Dare not to misbehave
They starch their shirts
And clear their throats
Stilted and cliched


I’ve learned to be afraid
For ever verb
That slips my lips
And burns upon the page
Another ten of fear and doubt
Drown the first in rage
I’ve learned to be afraid
And from there springs forth
My gravest sin
And grows my greatest shame
The page, it lies
Both white and dead
And my soul?
Feels much the same

Behind him. The early morning work traffic. The suburban homes. The parking lot where he’d parked his car, his work clothes folded up into a gym gab. His cell phone and his wallet. Telephone poles one, two, three. Behind him. Jared slowed down as he came up on an intersection and paused, jogging in place, until there was a gap in busy traffic. Then he ran on.

The sun was bright, captured in the drops of sweat running down his brow and bare body. With each breath, he drug in the smells of fresh pine, blooming flowers, and cut grass. He left behind the stop sign, the busy grocery stores and brooding office buildings. The fenced in pastureland, and the herds of cows grazing. The city limit was ahead and he ran toward it, feet pounding faster. Soon, he’d left that behind too.

His breath labored. The hills outside the city were steep and covered in dark, swaying trees. The blood pounding through his head was like white water, and too strong to resist. Had he left his keys in the car? He couldn’t remember. He pushed his legs, lengthening his stride. The pine forests gave way on his right to a silver green meadow, hidden from the sun by the swelling earth. He broke from the road, dipping through the ditch, and ran across the grass, leaves darting in his wake. Drops of dew, collected in the morning shade, washed his shoes and calves. Cresting the hill, he rose into the dawning sun, and stopped, chest heaving, to stare at the morning sky.

Soon, he was off again, bounding down the side of the hill along the tree line. Ahead, a field of yellow wildflowers, waste deep, gloried in the sunshine. Honey bees, humming birds, and butterflies floated in the golden light, drifting from flower to flower. As he ran, he spread out his arms and ran his hands through the petals, beating pollen into the air, and coating his sweating body with it.

When he stopped in the middle of the field, he held his arms up in the air, and watched the particulate pollen float past him on the breeze. Covered in golden grains and drenched with sweat, he felt clean.

What I want and what I need

Are not necessarily the same

I want the peace of a quiet mind

And a becalmed soul

But where then life? Where then

Adventure and romance?


Therefore, do not wrap me in comforting arms

Or speak to me with soothing words

But drive me with whips

Flog me with the scourge

And chase me from all my safe places

With a goad, sharp and terrifying


I will not spend my life hiding

In the safety of warmth and friendship

The good things in life are fears

Terrors, hauntings, and hurts

Good things are guarded by dragons

Terrible and fierce


If we want them we must fight for them

If we want them we must hurt

About this blog

You should look at the first post.

But if I must sum up? This blog is for the joy of writing.

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