A little boy asked to draw a picture of Heaven might draw pictures of clouds, sunshine, and his dog that was recently ran over by a Suburban speeding down the street. This image might make him feel a little better about the loss of his pet and soften the emotional fallout. Later in life, when he's a man, when he has another dog that eventually dies of age-related illness he will be brought back to those memories of the loss of his first dog. And those images of Heaven he drew will feel empty and he will inextricably feel sick with himself. This new loss leaves him with more emotional baggage than he expected, and he looks back at this childhood exercise with scorn.

Vast open spaces are more amiable toward the dreamworld. Skies, seas, and deserts - all under the blinding Sun. I consider economics to be in this same genre.

It is easy to imagine accountants, stock brokers, insurance businessmen, middle managers, and CEOs deliriously panting under the Sun's hot rays - expanding our Universe with the rules of dream logic. Rationality in an nonrational world.

essay prompt

"Born in 1981" - Describing the post-modern experience of encountering every war, peacekeeping mission, world movement, and national crisis through the postmodern lens. In opposition to those born earlier and their lens of experience - what does my experience lend?

Authoritatively, one cannot speak for others politically. It just further objectifies them. In a world where "national interest" is the justification for all foreign policy, humanity is stripped bare of what makes it humane. I cannot speak for the Congolese killing themselves now, as coltan is harvested for our cell phones; my frame of reference is the cost/benefit of getting a phone versus the violence towards women and ever younger child mercenary. The president of the Sudan laughed at us and drank his Coke filled with Arabic Gum at the threat of us shutting down his genocide. We are light years behind the reality of the world, and ever distant from it.

Something in the wind has changed. As if I could smell it.

The high water marks from this year are higher than the last's. I used to build sand castles to watch them collapse. Now I build thoughts dripping from the thighs of ancient goddesses rapt in ritualistic fervor. These sorts of thoughts collapse too, but with a honey-coated glow that absorbs the sunlight and makes each moment that fades toward winter reminiscent of long summer evenings.

I can reap sighs with scythes and drink embers floating in viscous ponds absconded into darkened concave dips in the land. The countryside and a time-honored tradition of wandering with a farmer's tan, an amiable attitude, and the wherewithal to occasionally say that which wishes to linger on the margins of consciousness. I can navigate worlds that aren't mine and feel as if I were born there, nationalized the moment I lay eyes on them.

So, too, I may be found strangely comfortable in you. Foraging in the depths of closets filled with shoes, and clothes that don't match your style anymore. Nourished not at all by any mention of myself in clamouring scrapes against the dresser drawers.

Comfort, my dear, is not a luxury nor an undertaking. Comfort is what is left after the challenge fades to familiarity, and looking in the mirror at my own face becomes a burden best avoided.

Powering rivers with rocket fuel, gulf thick with the heavy morass. Light this up and watch the water burn. Steam and the reflections of the flames, distorted by the waves and their own heat like the ghostly cars you see in the distance from the asphault on a hot summer day. When you stare at a flame long enough, you feel primordial. That connection between you and the first cave man lost in the sea of time and existence.

Put the mouth to the test, and see for the first time in your life if these words are yours. Feel that heat washing over you, pressing your lungs, the steam forcing clear your sinuses. Everything forced out blazing.

Being alive is painfully erotic. The pain makes it real, and casts aside those insane delusions of Heaven. I'd rather feel the puslations of the wind scalding me as I entreat the world with unworded questions. The answers are in the air, and I can smell them crowding around me. The answers are in my skin, dancing up my body and inching up my neck. The answers are in my eyes, wide open and bringing in all that surrounds me.

The knocking sound of the neighbor's automobile experiments enter my house, muffled by the insulated windows. I wake up uncertain about what time it is. My thick curtains block out all of the light. The timelessness of the LED lights of my toothbrush, stereo, and humidifier keep the room in a constant dull glow. The clock, hiding to my left behind my pillow tells me it is 7:15.

Somewhere in the fleece blankets piled in wads across my bed, my dog is curled up. I can feel the extra warmth against my leg. I've left my laptop next to my bed. I almost fell asleep with it in still on my lap last night as I was killing time. Nights are longer now, and welcome me with deep, vacuous thoughts.

My ex-girlfriend just moved out, and I am getting used to the space. Before, I felt that I lived in no-man's land. The space between two sides, uninhabitable. The sea of her stuff and my stuff has been sifted through, and I've begun the process of claiming my territory. My bedroom is clean, the living room is clean. Laundry is getting done. Each passing day, the line advances.

What can a man say for himself? A failed relationship says a lot about one's self. He makes poor choices in women. He can't handle commitment. He isn't good at compromise. He is controlling. He isn't loving enough. He doesn't set good boundaries. He is repressed. He hasn't dealt with his past. He's got so many problems.

We all do.

Mistakes are a way of life. If I live to be an old man, the last words I say before I die will likely be an accident. So much of life is just discovering what one wants. I've learned a lot recently just to understand what it is that I don't want, and why I don't want it. What I want has slowly been uncovered in an exercise in reduction, like a math equation. The basics have always been there, but the gritty details slowly coalesce.

I can't say too much for myself. I'm not happy with a lot of things that I've done, and even less happy with why I've done some of the things that I've done. But, through and through, it remains true that I've stuck to my principles. I'm trying not to dwell and relive everything over and over again in my head. Instead, I am just trying to learn my lessons and figure out what is next for me.

It may be strange to know that I am not concerned with the problems that my ex-girlfriend has that led me to this place. I don't want to punish her, fix her, blame her, or hate her. I have my own life to contend with now.

I welcome it.

when sex entered her nose
she pulsated pulsars
winking in the night

to touch her now
I'd need a space suit

this is the American dream
playing out in the corners
of familiar houses
in back rooms and bathrooms

it is all on the internet
except the smell
and the emptiness
wrenching against the insides

I know how to touch you
but I don't want to
given my disposition
to burn asunder

Somewhere in the Middle

on a jungle gym
they swing off crosses
splinters lodged deep
into smooth palms

devilish whispers
caught in nightingale throats
split from parted beaks
sweeping sonic swoons

and a jungle scream
forested in theme-
attics hedged over
marbled precipices

I met you on Halloween's Easter
holding dead daisies skipping
as you whistled Frère Jacques
in a minor key

lush grass grew under your feet
swallowing the ground
and faded to a pale brown
twilling itself into knots

life and death at once
in an instant

intent to be lost in the fray
stuck somewhere in the middle

There will be a day
you won't find one
thing about me you like.

Then you'll be free -
and guilt will never feel
so soft and supple.

Twisted elbows at odd
angles pushed through
open windows:

ugliness extends

through porous passages

assuaging emptiness.

But I don't look
at the mess.

I just want to know
who left the window
open again.

The draft is consuming.

Election Day

Voting is not a revolutionary act. Don't ever expect that voting will lead to revolutionary changes in policy. Given that, tomorrow has the potential of radically changing the face of American politics.

Barack Obama has a much more progressive political view on the following issues than George W. Bush and John McCain:

Human Rights/Civil Rights including torture
Improving Public Schools without privatizing them
College Education funding
Health Care with universal coverage
War
Diplomacy
Environmental protection
Energy policy and conservation
Tax policy
Economic recovery packages
etc.

The differences couldn't be more extreme. Tomorrow could determine whether I can go back to college, whether my house will likely be sellable in the near future, whether I can go to other countries without having to worry about getting targeted because I'm an American, whether our country moves significantly toward energy independence and away from foreign oil, and whether the economy recovers or if we fall further down the path of the largest growth of the division between rich and poor in the history of the United States.

Here is to hoping for an election that isn't fixed, rigged, or grossly disenfranchizes people for other reasons. If the people vote, we will get change.