The Road to Poetry and the Road to Law

I've always been good with words. Good with words. And it seems people who are good with words are shepherded at that tender age, that formative juncture, towards one of two diverging, forking roads. The Road to Poetry and the Road to Law. I could have gone either way but like in all great stories, mine is one where the protagonist is subject to forces of nature and heredity that are outside his control. My grandfather was an immigrant and a product of the Great Depression and he could never escape from the gravitational pull of these two anxiety-ridden, desperate mindsets. And my parents, well, they came of age in the 60's, and completely missed Woodstock. They missed the Civil Rights Movement, the March on Washington, they missed Dylan and the Beatles. To paraphrase that great line from from Field of Dreams, they "experienced two 50's and went right to the 70's." My father voted for Goldwater and Nixon twice. And my mother, well, while her contemporaries were out fighting for their wings, she never cared to fight for anything. She loved and that was enough for her.

I can't tell you how many times in those early gangly years, in those impressionable, imprintive winters, springs, and falls, I would hear various relatives and family acquaintances tell me what a fine lawyer I would make. What a sublime lawyer I would make. I could argue anything back then (I still can but I don't have that particular inclination anymore). I could take both sides of a debate and earn my money without conceding a point from heads or tails. Those voices of my youth, coming from the wise elders of my tribe, were strong and assertive and refused to be doubted. And for a while, I believed them. Poised to become the next Senator from the Great State of New Jersey, I looked the part. Nice clean side part, not to be seen with more than a day's facial hair, firm grip, solid eye contact, polite banter, respect to elders, respect to power. I knew the game but inside, did I hate it. Did I fucking hate it. I hated these people in their slick armor. I hated myself in that role and I didn't play it for very long. Yes, I took the Law School Aptitude Test without a cup of coffee in my hand and earned my acceptance.

I was in Law School for seven weeks. The time it takes, I think for some animals to give birth to a litter of offspring. The time it takes for the greatest hitter to escape out of his longest slump. That semester, I was pregnant with bayonettes and gunpowder, with the embryo of a revolutionary taking hold in my gut.

Seven weeks looking around me, saying, "What the fuck am I doing here?" Seven weeks of doodling during Property Law class and looking around and drifting off on the clouds of my escaping thoughts. I drew spaceships and women's breasts, and got pretty good at doing crossword puzzles during that time. I left after seven weeks, without much ado or fanfare. I just said, or at least felt, "This don't quite fit." For the first time in my life, I couldn't find the words to fit the sentiment. It was just all wrong. In the way something tells you not to buy that particular used yellow truck from the discount lot. In the way that you know someone has been messing around with your woman. Wrong in that kind of way. Without a backup plan, without a "Plan B," I just threw my books down and left.

Now, to be honest, I had a little assistance in hastening my departure and making that fateful decision. A divine wind at my back per se. Rather a full-body sledgehammer. The summer before that first and only semester in law school, I was to fall in love for the first time. Really fall in love where someone loved me back in the same way. Making out on rooftops, spontaneous nighttime picnics in intersection lawns masquerading as parks, and crazy vows of foreverness after only weeks together. I was taught two important lessons from those first weeks: First, how to properly go down on a woman (invaluable!). Second, that when you are in love, deep in the shrouding darkness of love, nothing else, no other power in the world, even the one of a loaded, trembling gun in another's hands pointing at your temple, could compete for your attention. I went into law school that fall with a tired tongue and a distracted mind. Even the voice of my own gut wasn't loud enough; I doubt had enough attention to keep up any kinds of studies. I was in love and that was pretty much all that mattered.

I left Law School and I didn't really look back. And I have not worn a necktie to any office since the day I walked out of the Dean of Admisssion's office to offer my own admission that me and his particular profession would not suffice as a match. Gone were any aspirations of the Senator from the Great State of New Jersey. Gone was the sidepart, gone was the rigid decorum, gone was that mask, that parasite of a mask that my grandfather had welded to my face in an immigrants hope of creating a new homeland superstar. I began the journey of living from my own center, out of my own idea of what a "good life" could be. I would learn later that Jung called this the process of "indivudation." I set about to individuate.

Individuation is no easy process. It requires an appetite for self-destruction. Cutting off parts of yourself that are not yours, and hoping you don't lop off parts that are yours in the process. Your system of beliefs, adopted at an age when you are too young to truly make conscious choice, must then be revisited. One by one as they come up. You must ask yourself, "Is this mine? Where did it come from? What were the motives of the person or persons who endowed me with it?" And then move on from there. Individuation. Becoming a free-thinking, expanding individual.

No, I don't really talk about my foray into law school much. Just like I won't really talk about my relationship I'm in or my thoughts on God unless I really trust you. Or unless I don't know you at all. If you fall in between, I will remain somewhat of an enigma to you. But this particular theme bubbled up today. Bubbled up today on this gray wintry day, under a prototypical Upstate sky. And I found myself backpeddlling.

I hit the VCR rewind button back past the graduations, past the drunken sex, past the complete-game shutouts, past those many lonely nights, past the self-immoliation, past the the smoky nights, past the days on the beach, past the intoxication, to that formative juncture, back to that fork in the road. A lone young man standing there with his bare soul and with his gift for words. To the right I see the Road of Law. I see structure, I see boxes of different shapes, of wood and cardboard and titanium. I see money, lots of it. Hanging from tree branches, suspended by fishing hooks waiting to pierce the flesh of uncalloused hands. I see grey faces, grey as this wintry sky above me. Prematurely greying. I see expanding waistlines and bulging necks trying to button collars. I see firm handshakes and nods of approval. I see automation. I see facts and figures and a desert of details. I see T.S Eliot venturing in doing his research on his theme of a "buried life." I see T.S. Eliot writing that if he doesn't get back soon, "All will be lost."

And to the left of me, I see the Road of Poetry. I don't see flowers, I don't see musicians with laurel leaves and lyres, I don't see wet and willing women, I don't see David writing psalms. I don't see David losing his mind looking down at Bathsheba's bare back on that fateful moonlit rooftop. I don't see a Burning Bush. I don't see candlewax or oil paint. I don't see wine grapeskins or dark chocolate. It's just a void. A black. A great unknown. Uncharted, unmapped, black and boundless.

The Masked Men of Salinas

In the salt flats of Salinas
In the North of Argentina
Two men sit with machetes
With their legs crossed one by one
In the blinding midday sun
Carving llamas out of pure rock salt
With their heads covered by ski masks
And their eyes covered by sunglasses
They remind me of the terrorists from Munich
Who stood out on that balcony
In that September of '72
But they're not here playing games
Of murder and distortion
Not fighting for any cause
They think is worth to die for
Not raising any flag in defeat or destruction
Just carving out their sculptures
In the salt flats of Salinas
Doing what they do for three pesos or a dollar

On the salt flats of Salinas
I stand with the sky above me
As the salt stretches on forever
It could just be a dream
Like a white lake from Narnia
The clouds they are sporadic
And the blue fills in the background
While yesterday's rains left puddles
That spread out like pools of mercury
Silver and reflecting
The high clouds up above me
And my wet sneakers below
And my pockets full of pesos
And my heart full of longing
For something unspecific
Something clearly not defined
That had only been hinted at
In poem and in prose
I'd seen at times in trailers
Of Gerome and Michaelangelo
and in that self-portrait at the Met
Of Marie-Denise Villers

I pull three pesos from my pocket
And buy myself a llama
That is soon wrapped up in newspaper
And is all set now to travel
Back to my bookshelf in New York
And find itself a home
With other scrapbooks and mementos
I'd picked up along the way
In my search for something undefinable
And there I would soon get back
In the swing of my routine
Maybe go get myself a latte
To warm myself in winter
To wake me, get me going
And Boost my productivity
That one hot large soy latte
Made behind a counter in 10 seconds
That I pay for in my dollars
That would buy 5 salt llamas
Made by the masked men of Salinas
Neath the brightest sun I'd ever seen
That will burn you in 10 minutes
If you're not well covered up
And if you don't pay attention

I'm a tourist by trade
I visit then I'm on my way
That's certainly been a pattern
I see in my experiences
But In the salt flats of Salinas
In the North of Argentina
I'd like to stay a few more hours
And take in all this expansion
Then maybe drive to Bolivia
Or another destination

Thank You

Thank you for the pain you caused me
Thank you for inviting me to spit on your pedestal
Thank you for kicking me in the jaw with your feet of clay
Because you see now that I am free of any illusion of you
I am free of the goddess and I am free of needing to be any god to you

Thank you for being more closed than I am
For holding onto your hurt and letting it fuel your rage
Thank you for your particular repression
Although I can not say I find joy in the fact
That it is destroying you from the inside
First your organs, then your skin, and at last, your soul

Thank you for being unsentimental and for
Closing your eyes to the Mystery all around
Because I see myself, my reflection
In all that you are not
And of course I see it in all that we share
Yet I am cutting loose for the moment
The things I've known we've shared
At the most common and actual level
Because they feel spoiled
Like milk gone sour
Like birds flown South for the winter
Like a baby with the flu
I need to step back and wash
My soul of you

The truth is hard to hear but it is harder to speak
Words are easy to hide behind
But far more difficult to enlist in the service of the Truth
So thank you for giving me the opportunity to
Serve my Master and pray at my altar
To burn my incense and let myself shine
And be open enough to be hurt
Under the wheels of your runaway chariot
With its crazy horses
Tossed aside as a willing casualty
To your callous warpath

If I am guilty of anything in those long few
Months with you
It was in trying to pull you up higher
Than you were comfortable going
It was in grabbing at your wrist
As you flailed wildly in the muck of your irretrievable past
(As all pasts by law are)
When you didn't want to be pulled up and hosed off
And I told you more than once
I told you with all the conviction I had
With near total, destructive, generative conviction
That only when you dove into the lake
And were willing to go down to the bottom
Into the muck, where the fragments of
Rotting wooden boards are whipped by time
And anklebones and jawbones and scattered teeth
Spread out among the flowing weeds
That only then, when you could look
At those Super-8's of your childhood
And those soggy history books of your ancestors
And all those shapeless monsters of myth
That you have made your own story
And fastened to your own ankle
That only then, would you find freedom
And peace
Only then your uneasy frequencies would settle down
And you could love yourself without needing another
I couldn't ask you to trust me though
Because in my offer of understanding the world
The trust was implicit
And I saw it in your eyes,
Everytime you dodged
And met my directness with evasion
And my compassion with scorn
And my truth with your deflection, parry, and strike
I saw it in your eyes that you believed me
And you recognized the skeleton key hanging around my neck
As your own as well

So I write a giant Thank You letter now
Like those planes that trail white puffed words in the sky
Thank you to everyone girl who ever broke my heart
To everyone of you who showed me a little more about living
And showed me a little more about myself
Some have been quite kind in their bombing runs on my soul
And some have been cruel and reckless
Swinging and cutting with no foresight
But to each and every one of you
Thank you for letting me take a chance
Thank you for engaging a part of me
That was enlivened by your presence
Thank you for waking up the Erotic in me
Thank you for helping me to the see the world
In myths and metaphor
Thank you for being so cruel
Or so kind that you should have brought me to tears
And some of you did
You were all beautiful to me in one way or another
Whether it caught my eye or grabbed the attention
Somewhere deep inside
I imagine you all as still beautiful
Still generous, still reckless
And I imagine me
And all the roads I've been down that
Are mapped out on my face
Sitting in a wooden chair
And feeling alright

The Chemist in the White Coat

The laboratory was full with all sorts of sounds and smells
There are apparently millions of laboratories
Just like these up there
The Chemist in the White Coat was somehow able
To keep track of the goings-ons in every single one of them
In the large beaker on the counter was put my soul
The liquid glowed blue and smelled of jasmine
It was room temperature
The liquid did not fight its environment in any possible way
But rather blended in as part of its natural landscape

Things were quiet until the tray of testtubes appeared
The first, labeled, "Fear of Falling" was poured in the beaker
Followed soon by "Fear of Loud Noises"
Small air bubbles popped up from the new solution
As the liquid started to swirl gently
Trying to make peace with itself
The Chemist then, in furious pace
Threw in the contents of the 50 testtubes off the tray
One by one, liquids of different colours, viscosities, temperatures
Were added with labels like
"Mass Thought," "Parental Junk," and "Teachers' Ballast"
The large beaker, originally peaceful and blue
Started to bubble over, noxious gases rising from the compound
The colour no longer blue but rather turning to brown

"Endless Horniness," "Abandonment Scare," "Please Like Me"
"I Want to Break Your Neck," "I Want to Screw Your Sister"
"I Want to Screw Your Daughter," "I Want to Screw Your Girlfriend"
The empty testtubes thrown in the incinerator trash by
The Great Chemist one by one once emptied
"Greedy Greed," "Fear of What is Not Understandable," "Fear of Otherness"
The glass cylinders poured free of its contents then
Becoming instant vapors in the great infernal incinerator
And when the Chemist was done, he looked at his creation,
This brown, bubbling pungent mass of goop and the Chemist smiled
And said, "That should do it."

Now I have spent my whole life now studying this kind
Of alchemical chemistry
I have become a specialist in distillation
I am breaking down this big compound
As my solution becomes bluer and bluer
And the smell of flowers returns to the room
Where I sleep each night
Sometimes with the closet door open
And sometimes with the closet door closed
But either way with no nightlights
Like the ones I used to plug in when I was a child
And afraid of the dark
Afraid of malintentioned monsters beneath my bed
And in other crevices of the unseen room

I have gotten my Super-Ph.D in chemistry
And I am hard at work in my lab
Identifying the components of the original testtubes
One by one in this anxious solution
Just like those tenacious folks who broke down the
Code for the Human Genome did
When they painstakingly identifying the almost
Endless Strand of DNA
This is a painstaking, painful process for sure
The distilled substances don't always come off ugly
But can deceive with a lovely pink glow and a nectarine fragrance
But I've got my microscope and one of the best
Bullshit Detectors in the world
And suffice it to say, I am getting pretty good at this process.

Bluer and bluer, I am beginning to fart flowery smells
I never thought were possible
In my labcoat I remain dedicated to this process
Although I know there is no Nobel Prize or recognition
Of any of that sort in the offing
I know that this is the grand finish line
That both The Chemist and I are out for the same thing
Just like the great sphynx
Each master riddler ideally wants his riddle to be solved
Each alchemist wants someone to come along and
Pull the sword from the stone
And here I am with my splashproof goggles
and my stained white labcoat
Putting my life on the line to crack the code
To this unfinished solution

The Night of New Year's Day

My head’s throbbing tonight
I wonder if it’s just thoughts that are trying to get out of my skull
I’m watching the television
So I wouldn’t even know what’s knocking around in there in the first place

So I make the brave valiant move and power my tv down
And the screen turns dark and there’s silence all around
And I sit with my headache on the night of New Year’s Day
Though New Year’s Eve’s has passed away
I swear things will be different in the next coming months
I’ve made the same vows before but lately things have changed
And I’m going to be a little better to myself this year

I think I wonder if I have truly loved another
Without any filters or screens
I mean did I bring my baggage to every sole encounter
To the women in my bed, the women in my dreams
I was brought into this world, kicking, crying
Like I didn’t want to be in here in the first place
Then I learned the art of defense and denying
And to protect myself at cost of life and limb
But it’s the night of New Year’s Day
And all past New Years melt away
And I am ready to love you, ready to love you baby this year

Smoking is the modern meditation
We’re in the age of the shortcut after all
And the shortest distance these days between my soul and God
Seems to run the length of the lighter in my hand
I know it’s junk, it’s trash, this philosophy of hash
And I know that I just need to sit and I’ll get there, live there
Breathe there and be there
Funny how when they say that it’s all about getting out of your own way
It may be a cliché but
It’s the night of New Year’s Day
And all that’s not mine is cast away
I don’t need that junk no more, I don’t need any of it this year

I’ve been three weeks now all alone
I didn’t think I could be alone
After all this time I was with you
But you quit your job and hit the beach
And I was so scared of you being that far from reach
But I have to tell you that I’m doing just alright
In fact I feel more like myself than I have in years
Though I hope that doesn’t bring you down to tears
Because I’ll say it once again
It’s the night of New Year’s Day
And I’m alone here but it’s quite okay
And I’m ready to love you in a straight-on way
Or toss this whole thing overboard
There’s no room on board for any extra baggage
And I’m traveling light this year

My headache’s lifting, the spear’s abating
There’s obviously something that’s been waiting
To be expressed to be enlivened
To be touched by the Breath of the Only God
And that Breath is only Breathed
When it has room to breathe
Outside the mind, outside the head
In the world of sunlight, dust and bread
In the world of moonlight and tires on a wet street
This Breath is just waiting to meet
What’s been waiting in my head
To bless that which is beauty
And to bless that which is ugliness
It’s the night of New Year’s Day
And I can’t even be sure what is the difference between
What is beautiful and what is ugly in my head
And it doesn’t really matter
Because this year, it will ALL be blessed

No one will ever believe you
You can’t fool anyone into believing you
If you don’t believe yourself
I tried over the 76,000 miles I flew
And drove and walked in my life
To convince people of life and to heal them
And love them in my own way
But when you’re full of shit and insecure
You don’t offer others any kind of cure
Because they won’t believe you
They won’t believe you
And I have hurt many people in my life
Mostly with words and with love turned away
A cold shoulder here and there
And a dagger pulled out of my hair
I have caused too much pain
I can only hope that my call for forgiveness reaches those ears
On this the night of the day of New Year’s
And I’m ready to start healing from within
And pass that on to her and him
All is forgiven in this New Year

I am the naked man just born
I am Adam after he ate the apple
And after he had time to recognize
That “Yes, I am naked, but so what!”
I am here to synthesize the Tree of Life
To the Tree of Knowledge
And to scream from the top of the Empire State Building
Rip off your clothes, take off your masks
Either love everything from your past
Or destroy it for your own sake
Or destroy yourself at the stake
And do it for your brother’s sake
Open your hearts, use your minds
then to fill that directive
You are your soul!
You are your soul!
I say it thrice so you will know
You are your soul!

My headache has turned into something else
Energy shifted to somewhere else
The hose was kinked and I popped the valve
Right here onto this digital page
I am not afraid right now
After three weeks alone
Things will be different
After 10 nights stoned
Things will soon change
I am here to love you in the best way I can
So, the tv is off
And maybe I’ll go jerk off
With not a shred of shame in my soul
Walk the dog a couple of blocks away
On this night of New Year’s Day
And fall asleep until tomorrow comes
I’m feeling good about what’s to come
On this night of New Year's Day