Almost everything I write is for someone specifically, and like any personal communication, is composed of extensive personal references and inside jokes. These writings don't publish well. They're never intended to.
The handful below are the least personal, and hopefully comprehensible (or at least entertaining) out of context. For their part, I doubt the original recipients care anymore.
To: Ben
Date: Sat, April 27 2002, 12:53 am
Subject: Re: journal entry - poem : "Return to Form"
> I had a dream, terrifying in its certainty, and way more relevant than
> anything Martin Luther King ever coughed up. I wrote the following in
> about 2 minutes. The only hint you is that ahou means "idiot" in
> Japanese. The rest is in English, so you're on your own pal...
For an Obscure Poet Wonderboi...
I've thought the poet's soul to be
a glassy globe, where all can see
the silent storms and snowy swirls
as hidden hands shake inner worlds.
Real snow or paper flakes,
to the viewer, hardly makes
a difference, so long as he can peer
through glass which words have polished clear.
But though I long to understand
your secret stormy sphere-bound land,
around your globe your writings pour
like Sherwin-Williams Kelly-Moore.
What should I do with this (I beg
your pardon) shiny Easter Egg?
Spend my hours scraping at
a coat dumped on, two minutes flat?
I mean no disrespect, my friend.
A wordsmith's words are his to send.
But choose opaque to paint the skies,
you hide your world from loving eyes.
And choose opaque to paint the skies,
you block the sun... the world dies.
To: J
Date: Wed, July 30 2003, 10:35 am
Subject: Re: As Yet Untitled
> Each act between them
> Crafted from words
> Ingrafted in silence
> Inflections unheard
Laughter's more than "h" and "e"s;
colons and parentheses
can't light a room, even on the brightest screen.
"Hugs," as closing salutation,
isn't quite the same sensation
as face-to-face embrace, in an awkward closing scene.
True... but...
Once a decade's done its damage,
ex-ex-strangers who can't quite manage
to dig through memory's mud and dust to dredge a voice or face,
will find preserved in inky blobs
Sandy's Brooke with Wade and Bob:
laughter ringing long long after the crash replaced the chase.
You'll say I let our tether sever.
I'll say I let us live forever.
To: J
Date: Tue, August 26 2003, 11:47 pm
Subject: bad mood
When Jaime's kitty took a trip,
her feline fury split a lip.
People too, when pushed and pissed,
will draw the blood of those they've kissed.
To: J
Date: Mon, September 15 2003, 09:35 am
Subject: 7am takeoff
a morning draped in clammy haze.
smoke and shouting; lines, delays.
a chill my clothes can't keep away.
i'm told my place; i sit and wait.
vibrations rumble at my feet
we start to move we pick up speed
the little people turn to blurs
my heart drops out we leave the earth
we're plunging through a cirrus sea
i clutch the seat and we break free...
A morning bathed in baby blue.
Warm and welcome. Pure and new.
No horizon. Endless skies.
A sun so bright it hurts my eyes...
(floating free above the weather
i feel this flight will fly forever)
To: J
Date: Mon, September 29 2003, 9:04 pm
Subject: cleanup (missing you already)
Nintendo controllers (no hands to control them).
A little red backpack (but lacking a back).
Grapefruity glasses (with no lips to sip them).
A four-towel rack and a newspaper stack,
Half-empty cider and half-eaten bread,
Sweatspots and latex and sand in the bed...
I can undo dispersal, entropic reversal,
Vacuum and launder, restack and restore.
But why am I feeling like something is missing?
Why do I feel like there's less than before?
To: J
Date: Sat, January 10, 2004, 12:27 am
Subject: You are really something.
I used to live in monochrome.
I used to walk while staring down
at feet that never took me home.
The world wore the off-white hues
of dirty sidewalks, dirty shoes.
Above the ground were dark grey skies,
horizons of a compromise.
I didn't like to look around.
I used to live in monochrome.
I figured I was colorblind.
I used to live away from home.
I thought I had no home to find.
---
I used to live in shades of grey,
until a flash of green one day
taunted, teased, and ran away.
I chose to chase, and as we raced,
caught in a chromatic wake,
saturated with sensation,
iridescent inebriation,
I drank in color, real color, vivid and opaque.
And where the catch replaced the chase,
a rainbow met a pot of gold.
Too much color to behold.
I knew that I had found my place.
I knew that I had found my home.
---
I used to live in monochrome.
But now my skies are painted bright.
And though it can grow dark at night,
when clouds roll in and shadows crawl,
I can never lose the sight
of your watercolor waterfall.
And though it can grow cold some days,
when rain pours down and masks the sun,
these colors will not fade or run.
Rain just clears away the haze
from the rainbow leading back to home.
-----
I used to live in monochrome.
But now I view a thousand hues.
You're my color. You're my home.
My world now is drawn with you.
Date: Fri, April 9, 2004, 11:41 am
Subject: Orkut profile
passions:
Semi-conscious compositions. Semi-aimless expeditions.
Flatted fifths. Handmade gifts. Letterforms with swashed serifs.
Man-machine communication. Perpetual self-education.
Nonaggression. Checked depression. Lexigraphic self-expression.
Words that love and laugh and live. Someone small to share them with.
ideal match:
Sonic, demonic, and far from platonic.
"Oxymoronic," she once called her heart.
I find it ironic that we're so harmonic;
ionic attraction but so far apart.
To: Michele
Date: Fri, July 15 2005, 01:52 am
Subject: Re: Sunday Afternoon
> I'll be in Cali this weekend - mostly for a crazy 30th bday partee on
> Saturday afternoon - but I'm free Sunday afternoon. Does anyone want
> to get together in Berkeley? I'd love to see folks if you're around!
An ion who once held my bond
accelerated far beyond.
As my potential stayed at ground,
she cyclotronned around and round.
After an eternity,
this proton has returned to me.
Why so long? Lorentz contraction?
Or just diffraction and distraction?
Regardless, I'm excited to embrace
her positively charged-up space.
But it seems that she attracts a crowd:
her head's in an electron cloud.
Miss Nucleus is hard to see
when swimming in her electron sea.
As leptons leap around the belle,
I can't break through the outer Shel.
Yes, I am bondless, gassy, noble.
Interactions make me mobile.
My charge repulsion, to be frank,
is so large I'd rather walk the Planck.
I know her spacetime line is steep,
with state transitions she must keep.
But just a quantum of her time
to pair up with her friend in rhyme?
for Andre and Jenn
september 3, 2005
---
A four-by-one: we hear the gun -- the lead-off leg escapes the blocks.
An eighth-grade transfer stands and answers each equation Mitchell chalks.
His grinning face assimilates United States with aptitude.
Beavis teaches English speech. He greets the peeps he meets with "Dude".
The Russian Rocket flies to fame, though cramping hamstrings scratch a race.
He checkmates kings, attempts to sing, and paints a senior parking space.
Through diffy-Qs with pullups too, nothing stops him but The Man.
He follows me to HMC... and sees leg two with outstretched hand.
The high school kid holds out the stick.
The Mudder grabs it smooth and quick.
---
Cruising down the straightaway, the Case Dorm King with Kool-Aid hair.
German sets and neural nets get set aside without a care.
Though losing teeth and losing sleep and Highway 5-ing on his head,
he hits his stride when he decides to try the business side instead.
Conjuring countless Java classes, hacking frameworks, wearing suits.
Securing shopping for the masses, hawking San Francisco Boots.
But Tony Lamas hold no promise; he starts scheming with a friend.
He itches for some dot-com riches... third leg's waiting at the bend.
The Mudder hands the stick ahead.
The CTO now runs instead.
---
The CTO starts strong and proud, with business plans and NDAs,
but burns the turn while burning out from months of sixteen-hour days.
He holds the reins to broker brains and barter all the world knows,
while VCs buy me free CDs, and maybe cosmonautic clothes.
He rolls the streets, black leather seats, and puts the lavish parties on.
But ROI is pie-in-sky -- the crowd expects a dropped baton.
Instead the stick just switches hands, and business plans get rearranged.
He cruises minds and redefines how experts get their facts exchanged.
But someone sideswipes CTO...
Consultant grabs the stick and goes.
---
His place erased with Chatting Space, Consultant takes a shaky start.
Empty pockets, filled-up Prockets, Cisco kids who ain't too smart.
We try to let the sightless see, but find the blind confined to braille.
But like the norm, he finds his form, and Pilothouse puts up the sail.
His code exposes expertise as readers rate what writers know.
He tours the towns from coast to coast and hosts his own Las Vegas show.
He learns the body's twists and turns, aligning spines, massaging deep.
An equine fall -- he lands in love... and gives a girl his heart to keep.
At Boulder Creek, with kin and kind,
I watch him cross the finish line.
---
I'm honored to have shared his heat, and blessed to have his inside lane.
His steady tread a step ahead possessed my legs to push through pain.
Even as he struggled too, he coaxed and coached with attitude.
He takes the race, he holds the gold... plus my deepest gratitude.
(Now our warm-up race is past.
The next one's real -- let's kick some ass.)
To: Michele
Date: Thu, May 4 2006, 11:00 am
Subject: wedding RSVP
An ion who once held my bond
accelerated far beyond.
As my potential stayed at ground
she cyclotronned around and round.
At velocity .28c
her spun-up state found symmetry.
The third of June, I'll gladly see
this collision's strange and charmed debris.
To: Brian
Date: Mon, Dec 18, 2006, 12:07 am
Subject: ?
Brian soared through Aerospace,
bored, ignored, deplored, disgraced.
His life passed through a noisy phase,
locked in loops of dismal days.
A breakdown brought a chance to choose
a beachside view with brighter Hughes.
I haven't heard a word since then.
Settled down? Perturbed again?
To: Senna Trem
Date: Sat, Dec 30, 2006, 9:42 pm
> One of the few set in stone requirements for a guy that I one day may
> end up with is that he must get rid of spiders by:
> A) Squishing it and putting it in the trash and making sure there
> is no evidence left behind, or
> B) Capturing it using some sort of clear plastic container and a
> piece of paper.
> Method B is preferred.
Miss Senna Trem
mused on bi-chem,
while readin' in Eden one day.
Along came a spider,
which firmly defied her
desire to read sans araneae.
As timid Trem trembled,
a man (who resembled
some "Show" host) appeared with a start.
Daring and dashing,
with tupperware flashing,
he captured eight legs and a heart.