Last Memoir: First Kiss

Gods, I feel stupid writing this. I just do. It's not the subject itself (which has indeed provided major points of interest in the bulk of novels, songs, and movies for the last fifty years). It's probably my own insecurities on sharing the experience, coupled with the fact that girls run away after they get to know me ( I know, someday someone won't, but this is where I am right now).

Fine, lemme play it up....

Winter, 2003, a cold Northern Black Hills winter... frost soon turned to fire in the coming harbor of youth and uncertainty. A small university, disconnected from larger academia but still harboring the same problems... sprawling, creaking under Crow Peak and the rest of Hesapa.

Men and women (only yesterday boys and girls) seperated from each other's dorm by something as flimsy as a lobby, where a bigscreen TV sits in front of couches, jaws open. We sit, and wait alone for eternity under the cold bricks and waning moon, nothing on, no one else near.

She asks, "What do you want to do?"

"Not much to do, is there?" I ask. "This is nice, though."

"Here," she says, looking at me, "I'll show you where my roomate and I go to talk, sometimes, and look at the trees and the field."

We walk into a small anteroom used for storage, the storage of memories and other things unwanted.

"Nice place you have here," I say, trying to be cool.

She laughs and shuts the door. "The best part is, no one ever comes in."

And under the light from the window of the filtered winter moon, we hold each other in silence. The quiet and stillness of life and blood and thought, shared. And we stare into the universe of each other; the holy moment.

She moves up, I move down...

touch... touch... Touch. Feel. Lips softness pain purity whole uncoming prayer of the ravenous night and unfettered emotion breaking and melding, flowing around and through wasteland of youth, exploring... wait... exploring. I gasp...

Voice low and cunning, she asks, "Looks like I found a good spot, huh?" I unthinkingly riposte in the falling argent twilight, and she suddenly breathes heavier on me; that was her answer.

And the light fades quickly, oh, how quickly as we are pressed against the wall... and someone knocks. Someone knocks?

Go to hell, brother. Who gave you this location? This is ours; who else has the right. This is holy.

We pause; the moment is gone, retreated back to the unwanted and gathered up by the comforting mother's embrace of moonlight. Parting, looking into each other for the last time... she leaves first.

When the halls are clear, and the unholy infiltrators have left, I leave, closing the door to keep the sacred light trapped inside for the next acolytes. At the end of the hall, she blows a final kiss, I catch it and send it back... and she's gone to disconnect, to fall asleep and join the black sky.

My roommate’s still up when I stumble back to my room.

"Where've you been?" he asks, turning down the radio.

And cold silver trickles in the window as my eyes close for a moment, only a moment...

"Praying," I say.

There, happy now? Ok, fine, I needed the catharsis.

Last Freestyle Blog

A Fine Day for a Ride

It was a pretty nice day until my friend Luke told me I was riding the two year old. I was spending the week out at his place to help his family out, and goof around in general (e.g. 'become a man').

He decided that This Morning was the right time for a ride, and I asked why, and he said because it was This Morning. Fine. But instead of riding the older horse, who was solid muscle, I got his sister's two year old, who had muscles as well. They were, however, not solid, but jumpy, rather like a yorkie dog.

Apparently he needed some "experience".

I knew what that meant.

It meant get on and mentally beseech any and all deities you could think of. But, above all, and this is important around young horses, never SHOW YOUR FEAR. They could pick up on that, like a dog picks up the scent of... those biscuits they're always running ten miles home to eat in the commercials. So, I didn't SHOW MY FEAR. It was actually kind of easy. Kind of like trying to be extra sober. Things look clearer.

We'd made it a few miles from the house when the world exploded.

From our point of view, anyway. From the young horses' point of view, it must have been the

world chasing them. Too bad you can't get away from something that big.

To be honest, it was bandits.

To be really honest, we were riding past a shack that had hidden several other horses behind it. It waited until we were right beside it on the road, and then must’ve convinced the horses that racing to the west pasture was more fun than standing in the shade.

So, our horses took off too. Well, after the bucking and hopping stopped. I stayed on well enough, but Luke’s horse went into the ditch…

… and spilled Luke…

… into a barbed wire fence…

… whereupon he said something like, “Ouch.”

I didn’t feel like writing what he really said.

We then decided that he was too hurt (and bloody; the fence had ripped his shoulder open) to try and ride just yet. I said to make a poultice of prickly pear, and he asked why, and I said because it seemed like The Thing to Do. He didn’t do it.

So, I rode to the next house…

…almost.

There was still the matter of the bridge. Luke’s sister had said to be careful, because the two year old hadn’t “been near it yet”.

Anyway, we just kept going, and he ran over it fine. Like it wasn’t even there (wasn’t much of a stream to cross anyway, as I recall). So, I tell the person who comes out of the house to please call Luke’s house, and get his parents down here.

At this point I turned around and saw Luke riding up, embarrassing seven kinds of hell out of me for making it sound like his arm had been taken off by razor wire, put back on by Dr. Moreau, and taken off again by a mad gorilla with a chainsaw.

His mom drove up, but we ended up riding home anyway. It felt more natural.

By now it was evening, and the family called a local doctor who came and stitched Luke up. Luke still has three huge scars on his left shoulder today. But we’d had an Adventure, so we felt it was a pretty good day, all in all.

(Incidentally, this was how we e.g. became men).

Modeling Poem #3

Human Nativity

(based on Lee-Young Li’s poem “Nativity”)

We are products of melting,

sloughed from the purest ore,

dismissing what insults our own souls.

Tonight, as the dark shroud of heaven covers the earth,

a mother with child will kneel, asking, Why must I be your servant?

And a sister will say, You are blessed among women.

As a holy light seeks to pierce the black reaches,

the boy rises, and asks, Why must I fight?

And a father answers, No one else will.

As the lonely shadows grasp along the land,

the man asks, Why must we learn to die?

And another counters, What is God’s will?

Tomorrow, as the old one rises to greet the spilling gray dawn,

he asks, Why?

And is greeted with nothing but the rain.

We are products of melting;

if we knew, we would be God.

And as the Multiverse asks the question, it shudders under the weight.