when everything was new

when everything was new
"and there was evening, and there was morning—the second day."

i clock out and free-fall
through cracks in my consciousness
and tiny chasms in my will to live this way

i find myself awake,
if not always alive
while everything is shaking,
wasting time, wasting time

in the spring in the morning on the banks of the willamette,
when the sun first caught sight of the rippling shallows,
and people learned to fish
to the poetry of birds in migration
--their songs, their formations, their
flightiness-- i tell my friend on the cellphone:
'i'm on my way to your part of the world'

'exploding like spiders across the stars'

roadlife

frust-ration! the things i put in my life that i no longer desire. the leaning posts, the place-holders are here to stay. and as i reflect on a short and passionate life on the road - an existence spent seeking out just what everybody's doing and listening to the roar of the interstate and looking up with surprise to catch sight of my first firefly and smiling up at the evening glare of the rockies (the rockies!) - well, i realize ex-actly why it is that i don't write anymore. i know why i wander around this city smoking cigarettes and then commence to hiding in my room.

thoreau said that "the mass of men... lead lives of quiet desperation. what is called resignation is confirmed desperation."

and there i was, reading eloquent and vaguely anti-social prose about "the mass of men" in the center of a river, in the middle of the morning in a great and rushing part of the world, where

we floated streams, and they left me on an island with the craft,
our intentions were sea-worthy if our raft wasn't

and there i was, learning why i always followed the mad ones, the one's who showed me how to "burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles..." and there they were, extracting second-hand cigarettes from the parking lot and stealing abandoned clothes from a thrift store where i bought a long-missing notebook (and the world's maddest novel).

and here we are, with the ecstasy of everything hanging in the stagelights of the evening. and here we are, in memory and bland re-tellings of a life once lived in color and with fury. and wherever it may be

that i wear clothes made of expectations,
and parade through the rivery streets of raleigh,
knowing full well that prison is dry and warm,

let me go there again. but life is not necessarily a free ride. debts accrue and obligations accumulate, and the weather gets cold... then warm, then cold again.

and in the firming up of my resignation to the wealth-holders of this world, i have become only faintly aware that i once had dreams that weren't just place-holders, that weren't simply listings of passions & interests, career plans &
potential vacation ideas. there was a world to see. i was going to see it, when

i was going to the see the world,
but i can barely pay my bills

and here i am, with my backpack in the closet and all my books on a shelf.

(and imbalance)

for the robot

so who are these people, and how are we different from each other?
'who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to holy

  Bronx on benzedrine'

can we agree on honest, kindly differentiating principles

(so that you don't get your thoughts stuck in mine) please?!

'can i get a drink started for you?'
'ye must be born again.'

order and disorder, balance and counterbalance,
'moderation in all things,' 
except (of course): moderation

in love and divorce

we make legal arrangements for a while
and make-believe that we're enraptured
my left ring finger says:
'you are the real me'

but you aren't
no one is

but the river (water woes)

well

i want to see the river like i'm meant to,
in reverence empassioning moonshine,
but
my arteries are rushing on without me
their winter woes are never on their minds

i was blind, but now i
blindly make conjecture
-through flood season
onto memory banks
and cameras can't ascertain at all
on the bridge, from the shore, what we see
the rushingrivers soundingsinto fall

how dark and deep and dangerous
my ideas about the water there
but the river just doesn't care

like it used to

squirrel's (corvallis, or)

squirrel's tavern on a monday night.

by joel. photos by amber (amber's blog).

if it's a week night and you didn't plan dinner, you may want to head on down to squirrel's tavern on 2nd street. their atmosphere is tasty, their decibel level is palatable and their burgers are deliciously spot-on. squirrel's does everything you wish those fast food blokes would do for just slightly more cost. here's a little taste of what that's like:

salad (surprising)
we got a $3 side salad, which we fully expected to consist of iceberg and tomato cubes. surprisingly, this little dish contained fresh dark green lettuce, sprouts, croutons, tomatoes and red onions - everything we would have asked for. dairy-free folks beware: the salad was also covered in multiple kinds of cheese.

burger
squirrel's served us a tasty, juicy and flavorful burger (medium rare) for $6. this is the sort of thing that you dream about when you see a burger king ad, only to be disappointed each time you visit a franchise location. squirrel's can deliver, ladies and gentlemen.

beers
we weren't in the drinking mood, but found that they had reasonable prices on pbr (a must for downtown) and no less than a dozen micros on tap. there's a draw-back here: there isn't a happy hour, which, at $4.25 a pint, makes this a one-drink location for beer snobs.

do you need a cheap, laid-back mcmenamins-style burger joint? are you interested in chatting while your drink your beer, instead of shouting over the music and the general roar? on any non-concert night, squirrel's is your joint. check it out soon.

bonus points:
+1 soy-free french fries.
+1 free wi-fi.

halfway

the half-life, much like half-caf "coffee," leaves me with a scorching caffeine headache and an insatiable lust for living large. ladies and gentlemen, i am a full-time food service worker.

it's one of those things that follows in a long line of other things: laziness, college, debt, no job skills, desperation, deep-frying chicken (always and forever in that order). i may have to remind you as i often remind myself that this is life, it's all we have, and it's brilliant if you want it to be.

the world (at last sighting).

p.s. if you'd like to read some of my recent work, you can find my food column here.