Antarctica starts here

This one-post-a-month trend isn't permanent. I do promise.

The past few weeks have been more quintessentially college than any before, for better or for worse. One wouldn't be unfair to say I've been putting schoolwork and the like on something of a back burner for the sake of that good time. Sure, I've have my days writing eight page papers and cram sessions same as anybody else, but I'm doing my best to chill a little bit-- just float on like people do.

"You'd better take your face from every cloud I see,
how could I have known you'd be so deep inside of me?"

But it's nice. There's something to be said about somewhere new to be on Tuesday and Thursday nights, new faces, et cetera. And as long as it takes for me to settle in or open up to a new crowd-- I'm getting there, I'm getting better.

I find myself unable to put words to sentiment lately. Like I've got something on the end of my tongue or the tips of my fingers that just needs some ethereal push to resolution, but things can't tie up so nicely.

-

Bridge
After asking why the last four pages are blank


A beat, then, for you to write
the ending, Mike. Behind cracked

hands— my father not knowing
the answer. His tired

slipper steps down-
stairs and erasable pen,

life ring for Leslie, smudged
where formatting had left

me unfinished. Like trying to untangle
an orbit with fingers and

teeth— there are things without
loose ends. A shiver,

like a line that is not a line

We’ve killed her.
We’ve killed her.

-

"You shouldn't tell them that you've seen my face somewhere,
when I leaned in your direction I leaned much too far."

And too much unlike Oscar it's like I've convinced myself not to allow any feelings for anyone to bud, for fear perhaps of rejection-- I don't know. But I get twinges every now and then. I have conversations that leave me wondering how things intersect and thinking I've still got some capacity to feel "that way" in me. There are people too much like poems not to cradle up and believe in with every fiber of being that can still hope. And there are people like me who need them so badly, if only to still believe in poetry.

Speaking of poetry, there has to be some line I can walk through confessionalism unintruded upon by the sentimental. Some line.

"Please will the highway never end?
Some things get broken and they never fix again."

Rick and I played another show last week and I think its safe to say it went significantly better than the first time around. There are naturally frustrations but the songwriting has been coming along alright. It helps to have people to bounce things off of. People who I can trust to give me an honest enough opinion. And it feels good to play the songs I wrote for friends and strangers who, I can hope, are around because they want to hear them. As good as feels to put sentiment to music and say it all like it all seems to me.

"All crooked, all bloody, I'll take my leave.
All the leaves fall and the turnpike lies in front of me.

And this whole wide world isn't wide enough."

Yet sometimes everything is just so big.

Yeah I've got reason to believe
that we're all capable of terrible things
but if we make it through the badlands
we'll find Eden on the other side

Maybe.


Bomb the blogosphere,
Mike

PS. All line in quotations are from "Whole Wide World" by Okkervil River.

PPS. Joe, I remembered to tag you as you requested haha.