zachimus

i've made peace with a lot of things lately, it feels really good. that's not to say that my heart isn't tugged, that i don't shiver or melt anymore, it's just that i'm okay with who i am.

put down your gun,
stop your steady advance
and look
back

at all the women,
girls,
you've left behind,

choking on the tears
that you couldn't bear
to carry yourself

what a selfish,
selfish man you are

a hopeless battle
you've fought,
put down your gun

sit beneath the flag
you raised and pray
for the men you killed

the men who could have:
-supported the one
whose father ran and spat
-been loyal to the one
who showed you her scars

the men who should have:
-been understanding of the one
who needed you most
-been respectful to the one
who didn't need you at all

(the men you could have,
should have
been)

when love
is a dirty word
do i still speak?

each freckle
on my tired arms
each mole
on my aching back
a tiny hole
where someone tried
to 'dig a bit deeper'
dropped their shovel
and ran

stop drop roll and run away from everything, from clouds and low tides and unwelcomed snowflakes you sat there and looked me in the eyes said "i'm not that kind of girl" but when you show me you are by inviting another man into your body (in some sense of the phrase anyway) while i watch wide asleep, how do you expect me to feel? on purpose no doubt, but then again you're not that kind of girl.

what do i do from here? do i continue to give the physical love i've got to give and keep trying to run into the arms of the emotional love i need slamming into wall after wall "i'm not that kind of girl" like hell you're not! i see colors, woman. i told you your color was pink but apparently i'm not as good as i thought i was because you're much more sinister than i thought. i just keep floating, floating.

finally given up on a couple of things. probably for the better i suppose. got nothing insightful to say tonight, just ramblin. i'm afraid someday i'll run out of things to say all together. about time to die by then, i'd say. i'm most afraid that i'm missing someone by being at the academy. everyone's out meeting people having fun. i'm stuck in my room studying all day and all night. i'm sick of academy girls (sorry, not you personally but you know what i mean). but it's hard to branch out.

i have the hiccups, relish the struggle. wish i was good enough to quit and go write forever. i'd sit on the beach and write pages and pages and pages about you, win a prize. everyone would ask "who do you write about?" i'd answer with a smile, you'd sit at home watching, smile back

i can't win

i think madeline is a really pretty name

last week another coast guard plane crashed. i read the situation report that's distributed internally and started crying. it was like watching my own death before my eyes. same thing happened last year. something's not right, i don't normally just start crying on a whim.

spent halloween in NYC. i'll write about that later. so much fun.

[if you have the time, i want feedback. i've never written anything this long.]

letter 1, "To the Oak:"

when i was young and my eyes began to grow old and tired, i stopped and sat beneath the canopy of a thick tree. i crossed my legs and fingers and sang songs, hoping my chromatic explorations (leaning more sharp than flat at the time), would rise with the breeze into the leaves and vines perched inches above my head and mix with hanging dewdrops and drip slowly into my open mouth, missing only slightly with each overdue splash. my spine rested against your smooth bark, legs intertwined with roots exposed, baby foxes played with my feet, delicate black paws swatting my toes. i tilted my head back in waiting for my tongue to be wet again, and saw branches peel back to expose your smile wide. i tossed my bags down and began to climb towards the bluebirds sleeping in your leaves, softly chirping with each breath. the soft moss that lent me her back for a bed let out a deep sigh as i pulled myself higher into your twisted branches until finally i met your gaze.

your eyes (that beautiful, rich brown - 'deep chocolate pools' ready to spill) lifted and i looked inside them, frozen by their proud beauty and elegance; eyes that emerged and lifted me into the clouds where i played and cheered. i reached forward to press my lips against yours, to swirl my tongue on yours and write love letters in invisible alphabets on your hips, to get lost in your curls and never come out. i must have gotten too comfortable, too happy, too something, because i never felt the breeze turn cool. i never felt your mouth close, your bones creaking as you batted your lashes and turned away. when i finally opened my eyes, teeth i once tasted had turned to dust. leaves once soft and green and warm from the sun smiling life upon them were now brittle and dead, crunching underneath the bellies of rabbits and snakes alike. i gasped and choked, lost my grip and fell to the ground below.

as i laid on the ground, looking up at blank branches that stared down at me with thousands of tiny brown eyes, specks of bark that screamed "nurture, nurture!" in New England pantomimes, coughing dry, shallow coughs - the helpless kind that annoys the kid sitting next to you in class but doesn't do anything to alleviate the pressure in your chest or that fucking tickling feeling that keeps you up night after night and you wake up and stretch your legs "here we go again." sick of looking up at mocking fauna, i managed to roll over and collect some of the leaves i had landed on, broke them into tiny pieces - put them into my pokets - ran.

so when we stand with our backs against brick walls, holding our heads high to hope and laughing in spite of wars and women who can't make up their minds, i'll reach into my pocket and pull out those tiny bones i scraped off the ground beneath your trunk and roll them tight. i'll let out a deep sigh into the still autumn air and place my yellow flame in front of my neat new package until i see the ash begin to form..','..breathe you in slowly, letting your ghost find her way down my throat and into my heart where you used to live and when i see you tomorrow morning, your beautiful eyes looking low 6AM tired tired i feel the peace that drew me to you your ghost will leave her quiet nest and float on and whipser

'goodbye'

to the feeling of your fingers laid softly against mine as we sat in our bird's nest (my best worst idea) and looked out above the dim lights and cold ache of the city we are told to call home

to the feeling of my spirit, floating like summertime snowflakes above hiroshima 1945, eyes closed to the hot wind threatening to quiet its calm climax

to the feeling of your warm eyes leaving me red and sunstained, of you holding me as i cried as i reveled in knowing that you had finally taken your number and laid with the rest. for the record, 4.

love,

zach

Problem solved!

Put up 255 bench (machine, not freeweight) today. What a great day. Watching some Carl sagan then SLEEP

don't have sex with girls, it's a recipe for trouble

PEOPLE NEED TO GROW UP

letter 1, "To the Oak:" is done, or at least the rough version. it's too long to put up here but if you want to read it, give me your email address and i'll send it to you this weekend.

i wish it was still warm

i started penning what will (hopefully) eventually turn out to be a longer piece of prose, probably 5-10 pages long. I've never creatively written anything that long so we'll see what happens. I think rather than have it be one linear work it'll be split into 4 or 5 'letters.' excited

i feel really down about the whole situation, time to put the brakes on this accelerating downward spiral

a bunch of us went to this really nice coffee house place in town called bean and leaf and watched sarah blacker play guitar and sing like an angel. that's all.

i'm drawing my last breath; you're never going to forgive me for this one

when the storm in my heart as finally settled and you've taken your position half-lotus between my two windows to the world, who will i be?

1. will i be i, the calm man who isn't bothered and doesn't hate, doesn't scream or let things out of his control become mountains he climbs and sits at the peak of, looking down at the footprints he's made in the snow?, or

2. will i be i, the man who relishes the struggle as a punishment deserved for a sin he committed before being born that would cause a woman to throw him into 4 strange hands and run, run, run never to be heard from again, that would cause him to try and fill that deep hole until finally he realizes 19 years later that maybe some holes aren't meant to be filled.

so i take that hole in my heart and put it in my hands, wrap it in a seashell and hold it up to my ear and

listen

I need to get my hands on a copy of Bhagavad-Gita. I discovered Trevor Hall today. I like it.

It's time for my parents to move, I have no desire to go back to Avon, Ohio. These are really choppy thoughts.

I remember back when times were tough, I wrote and I wrote and I wrote, and before that even. Do I need to be in a state of extreme emotional strain/swing in order to write? Do I need to be under the influence of some exotic extenuating circumstance to flow and feel it? Maybe it's time I wrote something longer. Not a book necessarily, but maybe a piece that takes ideas I've been playing with for a year or so now and develops them into something a little more hefty.

We'll see.

I'm thinking of getting an image of the meditating Buddha tattooed on my chest as an every day reminder to make peace and calmness my first priority and to consciously expel hate and anger from my mind. I've made strides significant enough in that area over the past few years to warrant something so permanent.

Hi Zach,
We offer the training as well as job guidance service as a part of the training.
Everyone who wants to teach following a course, finds work.
I suppose it all depends on where you want to go, for how long, etc.
Since we offer courses each month, in each location, we do have a good track record for getting people trained and into teaching positions.

Let me know what your plans are,
Kevin Cline

--
Create a Global Life!

Europe TEFL Teacher Training
USA Tel: (631) 912 7495
Email: info@europetefl.com Skype: kevincline67

Website: http://www.europetefl.com

my strategy isn't working but i'm out of options. boston tomorrow night through monday morning. thanksgiving in 5 weeks. time ticks.

[note: I took this down a couple weeks ago but decided to put it back up]

laid on my back, cradled in the arms of twenty thousand jigsaw pieces finally floating together:

step 1 the paper, one quarter cut from the tip of my birth certificate, one quarter snipped from the letter I wrote You in march, the last half scooped from the pond the stars float and dance in, their limbs limp in the ether of my cerebellum. then, the beautiful purge came, the expulsion of all negativity from my outer coating desensitized by one too many collect calls and concluded by an eleven hour writhing dance of pleasure, my cells tiptoeing around one another in a soft waltz. pause and Zeus taps me on the shoulder, points to his friend the Oak, backyard. He speaks not with tongue or vocal moans but with his innumerable leaves that stroke each other and wave in playful breeze and perfect harmony, a veritable symphony conducted by smooth air. his hands moved swiftly -> stopped -> and moved again. i understood very little, having only picked up bits and pieces of his most foreign of languages. the notes i took read "& never forget what the soil hath done for our people; our blood spills not from our veins but merely returns home" and I bid my new friend adieu and crawled to my next destination humbled and "alone."

next the realization of empty infinte, of being shocked at finally comprehending the atom and the puzzle piece and the Self. the most important Self dies at the will of such a creature as that I rode upon, and such a prospect is indeed as frightening to the unprepared soul as it does sound. being one with the heavenly tapestry of yellows and blues, greens and reds ((curved and folded into dimensions professors try and draw) broke my back. left on the floor to its devices, i fought. i ripped off my umbilical cord of electronics and artificial 'natural' threading and began to pant and sweat under the pressure of this howling dog. it barked and growled just behind my cortex, whispering "alone, alone" but not the alone of self-loathing pre-teen tomes, the alone of One with a capital O. The alone of knowing that the Universe, in its infinite spread and volume and incalcuable mass, pondered by Pythagoras and his many Sons as impossible to grasp, is but a point.

to think that all the moss-draped stones, all the singing blue jays, all the young Mediterranean waves with their tossed white hair, every vision-inducing meteor that breaks off its chains and rips through the stratosphere and every moon peeking through every cloud in every sky on every world in every galaxy is -- beyond the varying atomic and subatomic particles -- built from the same vibrating strings of energy, the same breathing, living soul is...

well, quite a trip.

i can't believe my eyes

i want to go on sabbatical and live abroad for a year. i wish i could get away and just write for a year and get to know myself. this place can be really stifling in a lot of ways

we'll see. rooibus. i don't know, i hope so though.

chicago may not have been built in a day but
it burned in three,

im doing headstands on your coffin:
its the ecstasy of the inevitable,
the rapture of the release,
awkward notes. take a seat.
youre half past already dead to me.
breathe.

my soul is dancing in dizzy patterns, lost as brave men seem to be and
lost as artists claim to be

good news, i didn't fail my EE1 exam like I thought I was going to. ended up pulling a 79 which isn't that good but is only a couple points under the class average. classes are considerably harder than last year and my grades show it despite busting ass studying every night. i sat around a 3.55 last fall semester, this year it'll probably be around a 3.2 if I'm lucky. went out on a nice date (?) for the first time in a long time this weekend.

summer break was nice but it made me realize how much some of the people that used to care about me have moved on. it's sad but it's part of life i suppose. i feel it every time i move, sometimes it just takes longer than others.

on the flip side though, being able to walk around and eat like a normal person has afforded us all the opportunity to grow stronger as friends here, especially in spite of the fact that we all of our privileges taken away because of the whole cocaine scandal.