23 Emotions: Nodus Tollens

blind corner,

I peer around the edge.

This isn't the right view!?

...and the sounds, or lack there of...

What date is it?

Where am I?

This isn't the trail of breadcrumbs I've been following.

The birds must have pecked them away.

I put one honest foot in front of the other 

and somehow I've not ended up here.

I'm neither here nor there,

but somewhere else entirely.

I don't know this place,

and my gut says I don't want to.

...lacking in persons, or people.

I sit in a wrong but familiar room.

Time will reveal a new plot,

but for the moment, I'm in the twist.

nodus tollens

n. the realization that the plot of your life doesn’t make sense to you anymore—that although you thought you were following the arc of the story, you keep finding yourself immersed in passages you don’t understand, that don’t even seem to belong in the same genre—which requires you to go back and reread the chapters you had originally skimmed to get to the good parts, only to learn that all along you were supposed to choose your own adventure.

A poetic sketch on a nocturnal ride...

the soft inky darkness surrounds me...

I mount my bike and the memory of a thousand night's journeys awakens in my body 

air on the cusp of cool, whips past,

plunging in to the deeper dark of the park.

the night is full of imagination here, 

and memories...

words spoken aloud under a moonlit summer sky,

imagination needs tempering in this singular moment.

interlude interrupts the darkness

and back, amongst the evergreens

they are filming.

Brightness washes away the memories and a surreal reality takes center stage.

reality...

an unusual emptiness in this city,

in this space in time.

raised higher in this urban nature.

the smell of wet asphalt rises up,

golden squares shine out at me.

Others, night owls, as I once was.

Now, I am nocturnal.

I exhale and mingle my breath with the scent of sprinklers...

apartments rise up like architectural drawings

and then disappear.

Draw in the elements of the night...it is made of magic.

23 Emotions: Altschmerz

(repeat)

a record,

the same groove over and over

(and over and over)

wearing a canyon into the vinyl.

same same

our twins "both alike in dignity"

as with you - it is with me (too)

my friend.

in this darkest time of the year,

you nipping close at my heels,

heed not the dark thoughts,

in those extra hours.

o sister

I'm weary of this circle

(as are you, I know)

this dusty groove we shuffle in...

I will blow out your candles this year.

Altschmerz

n. weariness with the same old issues that you’ve always had—the same boring flaws and anxieties you’ve been gnawing on for years, which leaves them soggy and tasteless and inert, with nothing interesting left to think about, nothing left to do but spit them out and wander off to the backyard, ready to dig up some fresher pain you might have buried long ago.

23 Emotions: Anecdoche

seven minutes approaches,

but for now,

cacophony.

we did this,

oh yeah, me too

except.

that sounds like,

last summer,

magical.

he was there,

i wasn't,

occasionally.

and then layers and words all mashed up and sandwiched together a jumble like unsolved puzzles just tipped out of the box hands grabbing at the pieces like tongues tasting the words.

(minute seven)

silence.

anecdoche

n. a conversation in which everyone is talking but nobody is listening, simply overlaying disconnected words like a game of Scrabble, with each player borrowing bits of other anecdotes as a way to increase their own score, until we all run out of things to say.

23 Emotions: Exulansis

The edges start off blurred,
an inauspicious beginning,
but those who were there, marked the moment.

Words cannot hold the truth,
though the experience did,
at least for some (I  believe).

The flatness of language to convey,
sharp contrast to the roundness of reality,
that curvaceous form of being.

Pale powder between my fingertips.
all around a vibrant monochrome,
enveloping us into unity.

But these words mean nothing,
to (aside from that band of few) 

you, who were not there.

exulansis

n. the tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it—whether through envy or pity or simple foreignness—which allows it to drift away from the rest of your life story, until the memory itself feels out of place, almost mythical, wandering restlessly in the fog, no longer even looking for a place to land.

23 Emotions: Onism

a whirring tick,
like an overheated heart. 

this, a fluttering, falling noise,
and sensation.

next destination...
(too many choices).

a leap that twists,
catlike, in midair. 

a heart divided too,
arms reaching in all direction.

i stand here, the hauptbahnhof of my life,
and wonder...which train?

once decided,
the whirring/fluttering will fade.

wind in my hair and face,
no fear of fomo.

just the desire for more time,
real gold is the beauty in a moment.

onism

n. the frustration of being stuck in just one body, that inhabits only one place at a time, which is like standing in front of the departures screen at an airport, flickering over with strange place names like other people’s passwords, each representing one more thing you’ll never get to see before you die—and all because, as the arrow on the map helpfully points out, you are here.

23 Emotions: Énouement

This sorrow you hold now, close, 

it no longer has sharp edges or angles.

Raw has been rubbed down to a blurred sepia,

the wash of florescence, turned to warm glow.

A jagged spike, one of only a few,
in that otherwise arabesque line, of life.

Radiating out from the center contact,
each line, life, moving in kind, ever outward...

...but that one, almost parallel,
the line dancing, a twining counterpoint.

Such sweet melodies...

...and I am here to tell you (your sometime self)

hold on

hold on

you will get there, 
and with such magic.

Énouement

n. the bittersweetness of having arrived here in the future, where you can finally get the answers to how things turn out in the real world—who your baby sister would become, what your friends would end up doing, where your choices would lead you, exactly when you’d lose the people you took for granted—which is priceless intel that you instinctively want to share with anybody who hadn’t already made the journey, as if there was some part of you who had volunteered to stay behind, who was still stationed at a forgotten outpost somewhere in the past, still eagerly awaiting news from the front.