meisteralready

[meisteralready]

A bus ride for average Madison, mid-July, a jump

The door closed as hard

And resolute as a fucking thousand

Good-byes and good kicks

And for the first time

In four days

In a cacophony of finals and final drinks and final toasts and final Wednesdays that turn into final thursdays

You sit

31b,

A deep back seat in a bus that you never thought could have 31 rows

And finally you believe a good 22 minutes

In this bus and into this journey

That’s it’s there - over, really over -

Covering such finality that only this

-this only gleams real-

And in the farther away you travel

and you let yourself feel,

It crushes something deafening,

And it’s not cliched or overly sentimental,

It’s an ending that doesn’t feel necessarily deserved or predictable

It just feels natural

And you look out the window,

Wide and opaque,

At an any particularly aimless highway median and just let your body feel the travel-

The sheer act of being moved -

and the first tear surprised you while the others felt inevitable

And so, yeah,

You’re now that person who is crying on the bus,

Driving away from everything

But it in its own finite way

The change feels

Like a slight

Reward.

[meisteralready]

Marjorie was finding her morning coffee

And it was somehow inside her newspaper,

An ancient form of comm, she knelt down

To go inside

The parchment, stuff, would contain no cuts

And the day asrelentlessasiteverwas,

Lacked its usual taunts and furies,

Beckoning her to come inside,

Her step was big and dutiful,

Immersed within the daily,

She reached back to say goodbye to

The cruel part of living, grab her final

Piece of buttered toast

And turned forward to face

An analog future.

[meisteralready]

“I’m getting there,”

John murmured through his tightly gaunt,

Joint-filled

Teeth.

He was. He truly was.

The synth, deep and dirty,

Rumbled his feet and pulsed

Heel-up

To the back of his neck,

A worried comfort and forgotten sensation,

When music was a night that never became day

And not a function; a project; a goal;

A commodity.

Such a rumble of bass or synth

Or droned-something

Made him feel

Injected,

Purposeful,

Brimming with aural expectation;

A syncopated hope.

Life has brined John.

He fell for the bribe of the future.

He thought he needed stability because he need stability.

Music unless duly rewarded

Never pays bills

And the heart, as much as you follow it with love and list and buoyancy,

Will sink fully with stress

When you continually struggle

To make the fucking rent.

John learned to live within his ways.

Their bit boundaries,

They are warning posts for if you veer

Outside the lands to often,

There will become a once

Where you cannot return.

And John with a guarded future

For his only child,

a beautiful tremor that gleams light,

We’ll call her “Chloe”.

The chains of his job

- “data forecasting” is what they call it-

Leaves him limp to wishes of whatever,

So he can give what’s left to Chloe

And hopefully she can find the cycle

And break it.

But weed is legal is his state

And tomorrow is a federal holiday

And with no free cash for free time

John inhales a pre-rolled deeply,

Hosts a small tear,

And leans into the sythed

Low G#.

He is, indeed,

“getting there”.

[meisteralready]

A ramp is a vault is an edge

“Vertical and Stoney”

The apt description of this trail,

A refrain I’ve had for the last hour twenty two

Into a hike,

By the app, says all of 34min

I’m lost

But it’s a heavenly lost.

The path in the rocky woods opened

To jagged, granite cliffs

Like stone hearth daggers

Warning ships not to enter and others

Not to escape

I can almost see the marker

Of the end of this national park

To see an end of anything is no small feat

Even if this one

Is just a boundary into nowhere natural

It’s a secret stash for locals on this island

For the park service puts up a sign every year to mark Indian Point

And every year, the locals take it down.

They scrub it from google maps and apple

Yet it remains on AllTrails and the park map - places only a few can touch and never by community-

Perhaps the First Nations can get some respite, not likely…

The ground, here, is pristine and the shore,

As side from a few discarded, storm wrecked lobster traps

Is just as clean.

The Adirondack chairs someone carried deep into the woods to this clearing

Where the rocks ever dagger and the path bends curtailed by mud and covered traces,

Suit me fine,

My back is a little sore.

For I am at the edge of the world,

Or the boundary of this park which is on the tip top of America, in a way a collective nation’s secret,

And I am alone

Except for the perfect sky,

Topical lines of rules and men,

The water with a ride returning,

Dresses in black jeans, a dying phone,

And a head,

Holding back all my thoughts.

I think that stead of the bobbled trail back of roots and rock and potential twisted ankles,

I’ll just walk the fire road back,

Again,

upsetting the first descendants

[meisteralready]

On attempting to break a bowl,

I hurt my hand,

Bruising deeply

Like a half moon,

A crooked, imperfect smile,

While the chatter,

Below me and insistent,

Makes my slight sigh

Come across bellowed and lonesome,

So take the form of opportunity

And zoom light wherever and to

Whomever

You can.

The need for hunger is strong by and the

Inevitable fight

Will still fight

Easy does it and strain to hear yourself

Echo

Because you can a will

And the arguments

And attempted bowls will simmer

Down and find their rest

In you.

[meisteralready]

The sound of somebody

Above the sound

And the whirling motors and sandbars

Here called “atolls”

It’s a final visit to paradise

Of sorts

And the income and distance

Distances me from coming here

On my own

The connection, the shine, the light

Might someday bring me back

To somebody

And the sound

Is quite silent

So perhaps

It’s the absence of the sound

That brings a settling

Or the fact that I am flying

Above this huge hill

Which here is called a “mountain”

Nevertheless

I am contented today

Before I have to traipse back down

Engulf myself into the fog of all the others

And hear

No one.

[meisteralready]

Inside the blue light

Where I wait to take my turn

And the highway rushes by

Outside

Where I am more assure of myself

And where the red hue takes me,

A light that scarlet screams out most of your fears,

Like a breach, you face into

On your stool - the only alone you ever feel

Like Simon says in a blue room

Where the girls are and where the lit are singing as they partake in revelry.

This does me no good for I am locked into her,

The hypnotic spin of eyes and her aura,

Such devotion,

That leads me to ingest and prep my anxiety

For another night on stage

Even if it’s just workshop, even if it’s just an experiment

for any actual thing,

I take it as serious as a heart attack

Some of which, at times, I feel those grips,

A cardiac infarction,

Whose heaves and thrusts

Dictate how I build up to be; a spine,

And that’s just before the first line.

A connection is the goal,

Honest and earned,

And sometimes in the best times;

It feels interjoined like a twin,

A symbiotic serpent that slithers in our collective memory, the world where if we,

It’s happy service denizens,

line up into the mass - a powered group mind -

It’s transcendent

A breathing machine; a beating numbered heart; a personified animal.

Warmth, we must self-generate

For the building’s heating is off,

And the thin draft of air creates a line,

So that our secrets are heard more openly

To all who want to listen

And the souls of us, which leave their flecks upon the downstage,

Can emit their own fire.

To be wrong is to be present,

And such action is the ultimate sin; the ventilate goal.

[meisteralready]

[meisteralready]

Is it the drug that addles

Or stupor that is drunk because

All unprocessed here is just the moment,

I am presenting myself to the present moment, why?

Once the drink of memory is shaken,

There aren’t enough glasses to handle its overspill,

It’s overserved, this familiarity

Of being afraid,

of not wanting to attempt to remember

Because it’s so close over the decades away it lives

That it might re-break us again,

A million shatters

And after a while,

The pieces become more tiny,

Become less easy to match back up

To find the original form, until the eventual happens,

The shape is so misshapen

That mirror look like portals

And the person reflected is one seen

Usually

Fell far away.

And all that’s left is grit

And glue.

All that’s ends here are the hours

Between where I have the lines I need to learn

And the lives I have to try to live

From job to train to stage,

The only thing right now

That feels anywhere real

Is put upon a stage

Rewritten

Constantly

On a computer screen

Months and years and forever

Before,

A word of dialogue

Debated

That I live in for moments

In 8 shows a week.

Where am I when I am away

From being someone else?

It was so much simpler when I was younger

Cocksure,

Assumed, the finding of my spinning jack,

For a bouncing ball I can never catch,

A ground zero of the person of whom I thought I was

And the belief of the person

That I thought

I could be.

But now,

Older,

I only see the fragments of roles,

Mostly from relationships

And somewhat from theatre, feign

Fawns of gentle mercy

When I am really

Just a scarred feral cat,

Fierce and loyal, scared

But stoic

With a stomach

Full of worms.

[meisteralready]

At the Park-Et

It’s not a big hubbub

But at the Park-et,

Which has been here for 70 years,

The wooden tops of the tables have never been replaced because they’ve been respected,

Such anomaly seldom found in Route 66 diners.

But here in the last bastion of a glimpse of a town before you hit the river and cross into Illinois,

You feel the weight of the family of a small community,

Where generations of siblings have worked

At the Park-et,

When there were true soda pulls and rock-n-roll was young and feared,

My aunts and my mothers all nursed the counters here and came here after homecomings,

Showed off their grandkids,

Ran into their old high school chums and always spread the hot gossip,.

There is a slow hum of spoons on ceramics,

waitresses (never men) trading orders with the back and joking with each other,

A little murmur of old time country radio and people watching the highway,

Watching others forget or never know the easiness of a large special and that the fried eggs are buttered, not oil.

It’s February and Christmas decorations are still up,

Granted, it’s hasn’t been over freezing for almost two weeks,

But inside here, it’s beaming,

A hearth of a beating heart,

A slow recession

And before I can take another sip of coffee,

The food’s already arrived.

[meisteralready]

An Acadian guide’s golden rules

(In relation to sound) if it’s constant, it’s wind. If it crashes, it’s waves.

(As pertaining to paths) follow the well-worn rocks.

(To the direction of the sea) In the morning, walk towards it; in the evening, away.

Tide pools are nature’s little hunting traps. They’re a gift.

(As it pertains to a food source) Follow the gulls, look for their discards. - shells and broken clams will show you where there’s abundance

If you can sit in one place and watch the tide roll in and later roll out, realize that is a luxury and that you are free from need.

Don’t mess with another person’s traps (lobster or otherwise),

If it looks untouched, it’s probably untouched. Leave it as so.

You are a steward. And also at its mercy (the park, that is).

(When buying hiking boots) the default is TRACTION above all else.

Leave the other animals be, most notably the tourists.

No one is ever really a “native” here, we are all at God’s library, borrowing time and resources.

You don’t need a rock to remember if you are truly taking it all in.

(If regarding a rose is a rose) a tree is a rock is a moss is the shore. They are all one element.

Don’t be foolish with the beauty of where you are. Don’t take that leniency for granted.

(To know the time) Respect your own shadow, it’ll tell you when you are.

(In regards to sunscreen) Yeah, it’s cold, but you can still get sunburnt.

No need to hurry, it’ll still be here when you come back.

Leave it better than when you came.

This is the circle of life and you fit in it. No need to jump into the center of the loop.

[meisteralready]

I woke up on too little of sleep

And thought it all out,

The car, overpriced,

Would remain overpriced,

To fix it, to register it, to make it mine,

So that went away

And though I was still exhausted and had on my sleep mask,

I could only think what to do with the

Refrigerated portabellas,

Languishing away at my ex-mother-in-law’s,

That even though bought fresh

Are rotting away in the frig since I bought them

Most things seem to do that

After I touch them.

The alarming dreams I have

Seem to come when I am in the most beautiful of places,

Pleasure makes tense

And I am perpetually suspicious

Of comfort.

I know why.

Forever being left

By a father for a new wife

By my mother through addiction

By my lovers by the mere mention of

Alternatives

Anything good I’ve ever had

I’ve lost or

Drove away.

Last night,

I was in a glass room with many splendors;

A immaculate white feather down bed,

Crisp, tailored suits,

A perfect, perfect temperature

But those I chose(?) to enjoy with,

Would not receive my joy.

My daughter who is everything

Wanted nothing to do with me,

Past partners were nearby,

Disapproving and frowning,

I’d rather have them mad at me

Than continually disappointed.

The room, with its transparent walls,

Began to grow visitors on it’s

Outside gawking in

And little-by-little

Objects seemed to go away.

I’d look in the mirror and

my demure suit had vanished

Left in a stained sweatshirt

And old corroded jeans,

The bed was taken apart,

Bit-by-bit

From burly, un-enraptured movers,

In a clockwise-motion ripping forth

Any comfort I thought I possessed.

In every turn, in every dismissal,

A slight snicker would draw front

From the crowd outside,

Finally my family,

Mostly the ones still here,

Half sisters, stepmothers and neglectful fathers

Pulled from me,

A tuft of hair here, a fingernail there, eventually whole grafts of skin,

Peeling me as if I was

A rotting onion

Hanging too long in a fruit basket

Beginning to spoil the rest

Of the precious fruit.

I woke up feeling lonely

And I was here on the island, a real island in my real life,

But no one wanted to hear my voice

Much less my opinion on anything

And though I was surrounded by people

And a function in the life of them-

A ride here, dinner fixed there-

I was desolate and alone stranded on this chunk of land

With no boat to carry me

To safety.

[meisteralready]

A half-lit winter churning

Of an occurrence at otter cliff,

I was alone,

For sake one other lonely car,

A begotten RAV4,

Left let colder and more desolate than mine

(Borrowed, of course)

That I left at the trailhead.

I left it there to stew unnoticed

And hopefully non-ticketed

For I had no park pass.

Windy days make such slow waddles and just as soon as

I hit the path,

I broke from the trails

To find my old/sought post:

A manicured cliff of red granite

Right above the sound

A sheer-fall drop of 150 ft,

If I feel the need to dip

Into frigid-near waters

And though I never felt the call

Even in the hottest of summers

The cattle call toll of the rock warning dingy bell

Gives me a sort of siren call

Even in this harsh

November wind.

No fishing boats a-sea,

No lobster traps below,

I wonder what the otters

See in this place.

But if you travel down and

Hike a bit more along, you find yourself

In an inlet

Where the red granite is now

Windbrisked white and

Where the water shades a deeper blue,

Where try to find in your head

The gemstone it may emulate,

It stops you,

Because none it matters,

The churn settles and the waves begin to lap,

The end dies down and the mountains

Come into view,

So what matters the colors

-for it’s their own, this place-

And though you are alone

(Other than the newly discovered floating loons with a burgeoning belief of realizing what the otters DID see) ,

You realize that

You are in a good place and,

In the best way,

Surrounded.

[meisteralready]

I can’t recall the days of love at all

And I want to live in a Leonard Cohen afterworld, but stuck in an ever feudal feuding ways of a Simon & Garfunkel.

And the friendship is there but because it is lost - truly lost with no past memory and no guideposts to its return, only pause-

Nothing is expected nor eventual, a horrible status for something that should be our comfort.

Where is it?

Hidden in the heirlooms and keepsakes of thought?

A hidden safe with a more-forgotten combination

or on display in visible rot,

Airtight and UV-protected,

Encased to be seen and studied,

Though never again

Be touched.

Or, to think, it’s in the junk drawer of my own personal existence,

Sometimes hastily thrown in there

Amidst a cordial belief of diminishing power,

But when it’s needed,

It is oh-so needed.

Theirs is a use that’s immediate even if barely utilized.

So any disagreements and/or stagnancy,

Imagined or not,

Should temper,

Because it’s not something that I regret,

It’s just that I don’t

Fully recollect.

[meisteralready]

Pass the one, enigmatic

Waiting on an open tab,

On my birthday

(Pre-season, really, it’s the night before,

But the only night this week

Free),

You pluss and blunder

Scout and so willingly will

Yourself into corners of the hallway of your life,

A running street that has no driveways,

A stretch of building that only leads to

More buildings,

Mixed denim,

Never felt right to me

Texture over content

Sets a bad precedent

And even worse,

A misbegotten fashion sense,

And Eriq lives here,

And proudly flexes such drip,

He’s met me for drinks,

Oblivious

That jeans never fare well,

In the midst of a downpour

Which happens to be occurring

Yet,

Every step holds him in my blessing,

A sigh is a mourn shared in one single breath

-together-

I will into him to speak his truth

Openly and forever,

Not to ever give that up

For if one does,

Everything else falls apart

so very

Easily.

[meisteralready]

Sonic perfection

When do I begin?

Where the countless revolutions of my eyes, my mind is,

Quite literally,

Spinning and maybe its dehydration and constipation but all

I remember is the latest of septembers

When I had to move back to Chicago,

We drove, Dad,

And you wouldn’t talk to me

About what I’ve done,

But everyone in the family and my

New and ongoing neighborhood knew,

And knew your opinion on it, but all

I wanted

Was to know how you felt.

That was very different and I don’t think

You’ve ever discovered the disconnect

Between the two.

You had in Steely Dan’s greatest hits

And for the first hour I thought

(Probably from the booze and drugs of the night before - one should always have a going-away party, even if for the all wrong reasons - the party and the dismissal)

That we were in the self-indulgent phase of some senior disc jockey,

I butted out, somewhere near Cairo, IL,

“Did somebody die? They always play their songs back-to-back when somebody dies”,

You turned to me, the first time in days,

And confused a scrunch of your face,

Saying nothing.

Turning back with a ten-second beat between,

You muttered,

“Sonic perfection”

And restarted the song again on the CD

Because I somehow soiled it

-The song, the moment, our relationship-

Even though, at any given second,

“Hey Nineteen”

Is playing somewhere,

Perhaps shutting down

Fathers and sons

There as well.

It was that precise instant,

I forgot about the yesterdays that brought us here,

Deciding that Chicago would be okay,

For me,

For the while being

And began to elaborately plot

My next great escape.

[meisteralready]

No one dies pretty, but the need for sleep is strong

And maybe the corpse,

The encasement,

Is more attractive than others

And maybe some people

Check out with a slight smirk,

But if you forgive a nerve reaction to lack of oxygen

Or the spastic movement of the smaller muscles,

You stop breathing

And in the slight chunks of time

You have left in those less-and-less minutes,

You body might be drugged out to high-heaven,

And yes, the soon-to-be dead

Might not be aware of

Their crossing of the planes,

That interspace, the in-between,

Certainly fascinates me-

If unconscious time is unlimited,

Where are they?

Their memories? The future?

Locked in myths?

And the inside will scatter,

The organs commencing shutdown,

So externally they may seem at peace,

But the interior will definitely struggle,

That’s in real time and truthfully,

For I’ve been there and seen such,

Is temporary.

And I don’t pretend to know what’s on the other side

Or even in that infernal

Sidestep of the unknown wandering,

But I do know what it feels like,

For others on the outside,

The push and peril

To stop this now-inevitable even if it’s the best thing for the traveler.

And in the times I’ve experienced it now,

To be nearby, to be in that room,

And see their final heaves,

I try to not put myself in my shoes anymore,

Those being tired and losing sole,

But I also try not to take the dead’s perspective,

It’s in their journey, earned and should proceed unfettered,

Without my (or anyone else’s) interpretation,

What I observe now and see in their face is the simple message,

“Now,”

They all seem to reveal,

“I need to sleep.”