My Favorite Pictures Are The Ones You Watch Me Take.

         For years she led a sheltered life. The few friends from her childhood had moved on. Life seemed to move slower, each experience was gently watched, savored, and then released into memory. Those lucky enough to catch a glimpse into her eyes found not a hidden treasure but only another layer of the subtle enigmas which, like pedals of a rose, hid the delicate innermost workings of her mind. Despite her careful beauty, not even the most patient a suitor found a return to his advances. She was neither lonely nor content for her passion laid not in the hearts of the unfortunate few who ventured along in pursuit, but in the absolution of a fate that not even she fully comprehended.

      I never had put much credence in the concept of fate. A seemingly invisible force dragging us kicking and screaming into whatever ends it deemed fit certainly did not guide me to a faith in a higher plan. No one was destined for anything. In fact, those who sought their destiny rarely found anything more than bright but fleeting dreams with the foreboding cloud of failure constantly looming on their horizon. Perhaps the cruelest of all the destinies one hopes to obtain is the fairy tale of true love. Somehow, true love should be different though. It should be placed up, out of reach, separated from the fates and rites of passage. True love seems to be the single aspiration, not of the mind but of the soul. It seems a foolish hope considering the odds that are hopelessly stacked against each person. Subsequently, I am led to a conclusion that we all chase fate so that it won't catch up with us before we are ready for it.

      Such has been the paradox that I have spent seemingly thousands of sleepless nights searching my way through. With her arrival, however, I now had new hopes to fuel the flames that scorched my mind in thought or simply another piece that won't fit into the puzzle of life. It was hardly the grandiose fanfare of trumpets one would expect to herald the arrival of an angel. In fact, the would-be parade of exaltation was simply a morning walk across campus. Like the hundreds of my classmates, I stumbled along trying to shake off the night before and muster the energy to survive the day's lectures. She, on the other hand, seemed driven by some hidden source of vitality. It was not the speed of her step, or the vibrancy of her smile that betrayed her hidden strength. No halo adorned her hair, nor wings hidden beneath her coat. By all accounts she, like everyone else, was remarkably ordinary save for the intangible presence riding like a sweet perfume in her wake. And yet, there was barely time to remember her face before she was washed up into the morning tide swirling about campus.

      The days and weeks passed, blurring from one into the next like so many frames spinning through a projection of my life. Though I would enjoy nothing more than sitting back and watching my story play out before me, I didn't have that luxury. Her face remained, like that one amazing photograph in a roll of film filled with dimly lit birthday parties, and accidental exposures. The shear impossibility of her existence was the most difficult for me to apprehend. Perfection was always taught as impossible, those who achieved it rarely ended with the notoriety that perfection should deserve. I had merely an idealized picture of a face in my memory to guide me.  It seemed a foolish hope considering the hopelessly stacked odds, but hope is hope, powerful till the last ember dwindles into darkness.

      Day to day I keep a wary eye trained upon the fluctuating flow of faces. Searching for the perfect impossibility would prove a daunting task alone. The search was not for something as simple as truth or merely knowledge. I searched for the realization of feelings that I had never known. Such feelings inspire the poet and artist alike. They dance defiantly from the sweeping melodies of the composers' symphonies to the quiet prayers of the lonely. This insatiable hunger for the most elusive of life's creations dwells deep within my soul. Never resting nor waning, it consumes my mind and provides a firm guiding hand to my actions.

      A hope is a hope, however foolish. I am clinging to just that, a foolish hope. Where I am taken matters not, for it burns inside me forever.
         
     Casey Machado

I've got a notebook of notes that I've thrown all about with a purpose of keeping me on the shortest route.  I've got a finite set path with my finite set goals, so many little notes to push me into the cold.  I've got a shiny record with my shiny four-o, but what's the fucking point when I haven't got the gold? These four years are for my life, these four years for my goals, I'm just trying to escape the shadow in my soul.

It's a matter of class, a matter of class, and a matter of simple civility.  It's the story of my life, the story of my life, the story of simple liberty.

I've got a notebook of notes that I keep tucked away with a purpose of keeping me bound to sanity.  I've got a history I've found to be chained to me, with a pride in that only matched by the irony.  I've got a full-filled life that I've built with my two hands, but what's the fucking point when nobody understands?  This life I was born into by choice or by the state; this is my cursed legacy I'm trying to escape.

-Scott Jobling

I have been forgotten and cannot forget it
I have been left but cannot let it leave my mind
If I lose it I will be lost
It was another drop in the bucket but the bucket was already filled
Overflowing, I am done
I forgot to forgive.

by Marcel Reyes

Whenever the wind
Moves through the figs
And makes rustling
In the twigs,
And sweeps across
The garden ground
And climbs the vines
With scarcest sound,
On this old bench
I watch these scenes
The remnants
Of a fleeting dream.
I remember times
We had before
And how you're
Not here anymore.

You loved to sit
On this old bench
And watch the daisies
Lightly bend
To a warm wind
Passing through
That stirred the
Fig leaves over you,
And run between
The orchid pots
And pulled petals off
The peridots.
I took for granted
All the hours
We sat outside
And watched the flowers.

pale blue lips
my father struggles with God
with Enlightenment
with the beauty that is
-
with the beauty that was
pale blue lips
He's professing his love for her
into diffuse fluorescent lights
and cardboard ceiling tiles
for the beauty that was
-
This is death
he speaks in present tense
washed over by confusion
wide-eyed and red
lost
faced with empty sails
his love is
but his love is gone
he leans over and kisses her
pale blue lips

walking around in an eternal
its really none of your concern
and im running again
away from what draws me in

if I find what for im looking
does it matter what it took
on my way another day
i've found my way past the sunset

falling
im falling
up into forever
the longer I go
more and more I have below

knowing the challenge
scale the flagpole
why?
what happens when I reach the top?
that much further I've to fall

happening every, every, every time
jumping from soul to soul I despise
for every notch on my belt a scar
does it even matter if I go far

one more day
one more
starving inside
for another lie

its all mental
in credible
non-decrement-able
it is only a question
of whether its detrimental

-Scott Jobling

silence in the fall of a thousand crystals
dragging cross grounds of dusted tinsel
over the bridge how the wind does whistle
down the hill of frosted glade

in the first steps twas a peaceful scene
white static accross the viewing screen
oh so silent oh so serene
fall into this white charade

shaking off layers of built up frost
looking out to this globe gone tossed
through this glass i spy no loss
in losing sight of what cities made

-Scott Jobling

this concentration breaks me as i fall through the blackness
spinning in every direction towards nothing but nonsense
within my thoughts i fall even faster
while i toss aside chaos in exchange for disaster

faster and faster i start do descend
but the faster i go the slower the end
ahead of myself i stop to wait
i think i catch up when i only debate

if its that true and if its so fair
why's it all backwards of nothing but air
within this mind under blanketing despair
hides the life freezing from wear

Scott Jobling

The longing look
from an unturned stone, days, years
of bleached sun
of nor’easter lashings

A yearning to be free
from earthy prisons, of compost oak
and maple
and fallen pine

What of the safety to a cage
from careless adolescent fingers, scouring
and the cold touch
of ammunition

Surely she will leave it be
from a limp descent, there’s no soft landing
on broken glass
on hardwood floors
outside the places one knows best