Promise

One of the reasons I haven't been writing is because I'm trying to look at one of my poems "from a different angle, under a different light, so we can hopefully kind of see it for the first time." The Decemberists' new album, The Hazards of Love, has inspired me to take my longest poem, Promise, and try to turn it into an album. Split the poem up into different songs, change the words to lyrics, and who knows--maybe one day I'll find some people to help record it all. [As a quick aside, this album has been spinning twice a day since I got it. I highly suggest it.] Here is the poem:

Promise

1.

This smooth park bench,

wood worn through years of service

is now an afternoon home,

now mine through an unspoken agreement

with squirrels and pigeons—

the quiet keepers of a natural life—

who allow me my one obsession.

A pack of cigarettes on the bench

and a notebook on my lap—

I have allowed myself these two

barriers between her and I.

Handheld distractions to hide behind

to feign interest as she walks by.

Her child walks ahead, examining leaves

and reporting his findings to her.

She smiles and my heart smiles with her.

I throw words on the page,

meaningless streams flowing

of their own accord as she nears,

concentrating more on our

overly comfortable repartee—

niceties that would be more at home

spoken in a bed next to each other

whispered as we slowly fall asleep.

"Hello, Jeremiah," she says as she approaches.

Is this even my name? I have forgotten myself

in her. Whatever name I give her will be mine

as she speaks it. I smile and nod her

a good afternoon as I do every time, my voice

caught, trapped and afraid of her.

But it will not be able to hide for long.

Standing over me, her dominance will draw it out.

"How is the writing coming along?"

I look at the page, worthless words in her presence,

and cover it with a shy hand.

"The usual," I tell her. "I don't think

there's much inspiration left in the park."

Outside of you.

Leaves rattle around our feet and the wind—

the wind, another friend for which I am grateful—

lifts her hair in waves of dark night ocean

(an ocean I would die to swim in)

as she examines our surroundings.

"You're probably right," she tells me.

"This is a dying park. A dying city, really.

So much could happen here and never does."

A metaphor for the two of us,

but is that how she means it?

I look to her eyes for a sign

but she is looking off around the park,

finding evidence to support her statement.

I look then to her child for a recognition,

knowing no one else close to her to go to.

Our eyes meet and he tugs his mother's sleeve

in the frantically gentle way lovemaking would require.

This is her time to go, and I am bid farewell.

I retreat as I watch her to one of my own hideaways,

a cool cigarette—the only thing able to guard me

as the notebook rests uselessly on my lap.

2.

A week now since I have left the apartment.

The city bears down on me with dying breath

I can no longer help but notice.

I have given up on my daily obsession

of watching her in the park,

of exchanging our few words

and going about our afternoons—

her mind no doubt drifting to other things,

mine stuck with her through sleep and dreams.

My soul, connected to the city since birth,

is dying with it, being crushed

under the weight of a thousand failures

occurring through no fault of my own,

but mine nonetheless. A failure

to be born in a proverbial right place

and right time—a cliché even I can no longer avoid.

A failure to have known her

even seconds before the father.

Seconds. So little time needed

to change lives.

3.

Do you believe in reincarnation

a voice asks me in a dream,

my first dream in weeks barren of her.

Should I

I ask the voice,

itself as disembodied

as I am now disenfranchised.

You will be hers in your next life

the voice tells me.

She appears as I last saw her,

hair askew as the wicked wind

has his way in an afternoon dance

beneath dying trees with aching limbs.

Do I believe this foreign voice

now bringing me promise through

an icy ocean which itself promises only to drown?

To try to find logic in a situation

which requires only the opposite

is yet another promise of failure in this poor city.

I want to walk away, to shrug off

the mad ramblings of the voice of a dream,

but I find myself desperate to hold on

to this place I've come, as unfamiliar

and unknown as I now find myself.

I must make a decision before I leave,

that much is clear to me now,

but the time it will take will see

kings dethroned and empires destroyed

and begun anew. Species will become extinct,

buildings will crumble a hundred times over

as I battle with my mind.

My life to now has lacked this belief,

this empty voice of laden promises

leading me down paths I never

would have seen on my own.

Should this be god? Mine if no one else's.

Who should speak to me in such a way

in dream if not god?

This is the proof of mind I require

and this is the proof I will take.

I leave this place and head to morning.

4.

Too much coffee and too many cigarettes

guide me through early day,

but something must take my mind

from what I heard from a subconscious god.

These indulgences fail to keep my mind

from her or our next life together;

I try to drown myself in these things,

choke myself with every inhalation

because every facet of my dying

brings me closer to her.

To overdo everything to the point of self-destruction

makes me finally hers, a fate I have

gone over in my head a thousand times

in this infantile morning.

I must now make the choice which has been

holding down my thoughts and

clenching at my soul for what seems like

a slow eternity—yet another decision

to take lifetimes to mull over,

to weigh pros and cons and slowly

erode my dreams over.

What better place to mull the decision, then,

but the park where everything was begun—

the bench that sent my life

in an alternating spiral down

through love and pain and

happiness and an ultimate death.

I pass the bench without a thought,

taken by legs I cannot control

through this dying place as

the wind blows tree branches out of my path,

sentinels on either side guarding my way.

My friends the squirrels and pigeons pay

respect as I walk by, lining the path and

chattering their last farewell even

as I cannot look them in the eye.

The park end and the beach begins,

my funeral party leaving me to be,

stopping at the sand and bowing their heads.

This season finds the beach empty

and I continue on, watched but not noticed

as the cold water warns my feet to

turn back and keep me warm.

The message does not make it to my brain,

now determined to be hers at all costs.

It is hard to walk now, my breath coming

ragged with what is at hand—

a climax of inhalations laden with salt

and heavy with panic. Something feral

inside me demands I turn back, now

over my head, but I resist the urge

as the sour ocean pushes at my lungs.

I once built sand castles here as a child

and now I watch my unsteady walls collapse

at the weight of a thousand waves

never ceasing in their mission.

Through the slow rays of light

which make their way through the waves

above me, I can see her making her way to me—

her hair suspended and glistening

and a white robe floating around her.

she smiles and I smile back through

teeth gritted with salt and sand.

I am able, for the first time, to touch

her face and for the first time

life brightens around me. She kisses me

and I am now sure that I am hers.

5.

Another trip to the park to see the leaves

freshly fallen and littering the ground.

There is a beach near here where my mother,

now dawdling behind, took me this summer

to swim and build sandcastles.

The leaves on the ground display a rainbow

of autumn colors; she knows I love this.

What I love more, though, are the piles

she makes me in the front yard,

her love never tiring of building them back up

after I've scattered them jumping, crawling and wrestling.

I ignore her calls for me to be careful

as I run ahead, seeing a squirrel

pack away provisions for the inevitable winter

just around the corner. There are more leaves ahead,

and I must make sure to see them all,

touch them, throw them into the air

to prove I am carefree and to see

where and how they land.

After conducting more experiments,

I turn back to see she has stopped

to talk to a man, a man she stops with frequently.

I make my way over, a strange feeling

creeps up my spine, stirring the wind

and shaking loose frail leaves from frail limbs.

This familiarity takes hold as I see the man

for the first time up close, but this is

far from the first I've known him.

"So much could happen here and never does."

Now the metaphor once thought aimed at me

has become inaccurate—so much has happened here.

Everything has happened here and how,

or in a different now—a now I have seen

through two people. A now I suffer through again.

Is this what my subconscious god—subconscious devil—

had in mind? Is this the love for which

I fought so hard against the sea,

against life, finally giving in to let

this love take over? The heavens' ruse

has taken yet another victim and I now know

the truth about endings and beginnings.

I tug her sleeve—we must go now.

I cannot stay here and look at my

former broken self. We walk.

"What a nice gentleman," she says.

"Perhaps I should ask him to coffee tomorrow."

Unnecessary and impossible, I now know,

for I am truly hers already.

That is the poem. I think if I was able to get a female to guest-sing the female parts (and extend them a little bit to make it worth someone's time), it would end up a really dynamic effort. The first step I took is to map out the song titles and use some of the lines in the poem to show where I would kind of break up the whole effort:

1. The Quiet Keepers of a Natural Life
2. So Much Could Happen Here and Never Does Pt. 1 (This is a Dying City)
3. The City Bears Down
4. You Will Be Hers in Your Next Life
5. These Indulgences Fail
6. Through This Dying Place
7. Inhalations Laden with Salt
8. Unsteady Walls Collapse
9. To Swim and Build Sandcastles
10. So Much Could Happen Here and Never Does Pt. 2 (A Now I Have Seen Through Two People)

This is my current project (for about a week). It would really be basically taking the story and re-writing it, since there really is no meter or rhyme or anything that makes a song good. But we'll see what comes of it.