Where words would never do.

I just wanted to make you something beautiful
--Industries of the Blind

Harmony in the Boudoir

After years of marriage, he stands at the foot of the bed and
tells his wife that she will never know him, that for everything
he says there is more that he does not say, that behind each
word he utters there is another word, and hundreds more be-
hind that one. All those unsaid words, he says, contain his true
self, which has been betrayed by the superficial self before her.
"So you see," he says, kicking off his slippers, "I am more than
what I have led you to believe I am." "Oh, you silly man," says
his wife, "of course you are. I find that just thinking of you
having so many selves receding into nothingness is very excit-
ing. That you barely exist as you are couldn't please me more."


-- Mark Strand

Begin Again

Dream, how I dream to feel
Dream, how I dream to feel

And everything will fill with light
A golden sun would fool this night

And all that is and ever was
Begin again, begin again.

Bono kept talking about that place where he can't live. Have you been there?

In his essay “Specialization of Poetry,” poet Wendell Berry wrote:
“there is, in reality, no such choice as “Yeats’s Perfection of the life, or of the work…” 
It is a necessary tension.

Hence this song, “With or Without You” by U2. It’s probably the most played single from the band that's been covered by so many artists.

 

In one interview in the late ‘80s, U2 lead vocalist Bono talked about what inspired the song. Bono wrote the lyrics while struggling to reconcile responsibilities, both as a married man and musician. He realized that neither facet of his life defined him, but rather the tension between the two.

 Now that’s a lived song.


 Unless you’d rather see this explained in diagram form.

Chair Variations

I surrendered my severed limbs
to the mercy of nails
to become whole again.

*

I have offered my flat surface
for comfort.

I serve many, indefinitely.
I never learned
to count the hours.

*

Sensing your restlessness,
my sturdy form keeps you still.

*

My back remains unmoved by your back.
I knew you'd lean, eventually.

*

I am behind and beneath you.

*

Despite the common intimacies,
Solitude is my loyal companion.

*

A touch is always foreign;
one person's grasp
is unlike another's.

*

One day you will not resist
the urge to carve words on my skin.

*

My skin is my memory:
I keep the marks you leave,
the deep and undecipherable
as well as the names
you carve yet forget.

*

Everyone is fleeting.

I remain unmoved
and never used to it.

*

I am grateful you keep me occupied
however momentary. I accept
this is my purpose.

*

I recognize the warmth
of your body at rest.

I keep this for as long as I can.

Dumaguete in May

"It's something unpredictable, but in the end is right
I hope you had the time of your life." - Green Day

\

Passing

Some nights don't beg for sleep but keep your eyes locked in the dark staring at the nothing that has passed your body so many times. You must have caught it once, maybe twice, then went on to somewhere more important; a celebration where firm hands would clink glasses full of wine. Try as you might, you can no longer recall for whom the party was, or what was so eventful you were glad to be there that night. But it was where everyone placed their life on desires as though the endless meant the sun would fail to rise. Anyhow, nothing, for so long, has passed: It is no longer a question of how much time you have wasted. Hope is a man on a train who missed your station because he was busy pitying the drunk who fell by his side. He was always passing, and wherever he went, he was expected. He had everywhere to go.