ON HALLOWED EVENINGS, MORNINGS, DAYS.

I've made some small sojourns as of late. New Orleans and Baton Rouge and Athens. I spent a night in Picayune, where J now lives. Odd to think that he's been my best friend for five years and it was my first time meeting his father. Missing him so, I hate to admit that J's Mississippi life is so picturesque: a house hidden in the Delta, complete with a floating gazebo and a brilliant black dog. Though it was cold, we fell asleep on the roof. Star-gazing til our eyes went starry.

On the drive back, I passed an abandoned house. Full of goldenrod.

me: We all miss you. I say it aloud at least once a day.
j: I would say it, but then my father would notice I was talking to myself.
me: You mean he doesn't know?
j: I have inner dialogues all the time--your name is mentioned a lot. I meet with the committee of "who knows" and we talk. Well, they talk. I just listen.
me: Yeah...
j: Are you going to decorate yourself for all hallow's eve?
me: Yes. I am going to be a grail knight.
j: Guarding or searching for the grail?
me: Searching.
j: Ah, well. I have it.

Turned out that Perceval is not readily recognized by most. I got asked if I was the Statue of Liberty. 2010 definitely marks the strangest Halloween I've had. Woke up in P's bed, late for work and still drunk. Searched for my clothes only to realize I had nought but shining armor. How soft and how small he asked me to stay. My hand crushed against his chest. It seemed then that he was the boon I sought. A few hours later, we crossed paths at a party and he acted as if he hardly knew me. Continually I chase the False Knight. All sulks, I nursed my green grail, accepting all manner of mead from strangers.

I know better. I do. But knowing better is so much too little.

Received a long letter from Brooklyn. It was A's reply to the letter I wrote him a year-and-a-half ago, the letter he took to Spain with him. Explaining the ghost he wrestles, the ghost who until recently was him. Ghost-writing himself in trembling cursive, he told me about the brownstone tomb he haunts, the books buried in his chest like scarabs. I wonder: is the curse knowing? Or not?

Thinking now of Cypress trees. It is common knowledge that Cypress trees scoff at ghosts, especially those who write letters. Cypress trees which feed on the minerals tarrying in our emptied bodies. Whose roots crawl ever boneward.

My writing has been getting some attention lately. Which continually dumbfounds me. I read at a poetry reading in Athens, Georgia. A bearded stranger came up to me after. Kissed my hand and asked if we could make an abortion happen. Come again?

Rain has returned to the South and it's immaculate. My umbrella is a wilted black flower. No matter no matter. Water collects in my hair, alluding to all the things I can't. Everything ink washed. With a tin roof, it's hard to get out of bed. The rain keeps wandering into my dreams and vice versa. Dreamt of a house routinely carried away by water... Shared the rainy dark with my poetry teacher, crow-homeric bard that he is. He asked why I wasn't shopping a manuscript around. A manuscript? For a book.

A BOOK!

There's been less and less traffic at the music library. Undoubtedly it's just the lull before the storm of finals. Some nights, hours pass without my talking to anyone. It's those shifts that I linger in the stacks, whispering numbers to bookshelves. This my onlyest vigil.

Sunday night, everyone got drunk. L's newest project consists of filming mundane things and playing them backwards. Eggs unsizzling and falling back into their eggshells. Butter solidifying from a golden pool, spelling out words. I carved a Venus de Milo out of cheese. On film, she rose up out of the pan. Smoke her seasurf. Naturally the house smelled awful. A and T were speaking in Spanish, miming out telenovelas. I was saddened by how much of the language I have forgotten in six months. A cradled my face in his hands, saying No están perdidas. Están guardadas.

In other news, I tried to quit smoking and failed.

In other news, Peter Streckfus spoke to our class about the book he is working on--his first since winning the Yale Series of Younger Poets prize. His book in which he is his own father. In which his soul is a fish. As he read, I realized all at once that I've never dreamt of my father.

IN SEARCH OF SOUND & FURY

Annie, Sydney and I decided at midnight that the only thing to do was drive three-and-a-half hours to Oxford, Mississippi, and visit William Faulkner's grave.

Lacking true navigational skills, we were intuitive seekers. Backroads and southern towns with strange names. Egypt and Verona, MS. Deer appearing in the headlights for only a moment and then passing away like phantom-creatures. A fox ran across the road, leaving me feeling young and tricky. We saw two shooting stars.

Arrived at Old Bill's grave at 2:57 AM. Since the trip was completely spontaneous, we lacked the necessary bourbon with which to grace his grave. I prayed that he might forgive us for pouring beer at his feet instead. We left him love-letters in the empty bottle.

To William Faulkner---
Godfather of soil and burning-hearts.
We drove on a whim, on a darkened dream, from Tuscaloosa, AL, to see you.
Along the way we saw wild deer, foxes, and cats.
Keeper of ghosts and green glass and the poem that is the South,
this night is for you.
AGM
April 22nd, 2009 - 2:57 AM

I cannot tell you how strange it is to stand there and know that William Faulkner is resting beneath you. Instead of flowers, people plant pens in the ground. I put my pen among them, imagining for a moment that it would take root. Blood-root. That the ink would seep down and down and down and return his words to him.

Listened to Leadbelly on the way back through Tupelo. In the pines, in the pines, where the sun don't shine, tell me where did you sleep last night? I only slept ten minutes the entire night. Watched the twilight drag itself along. Black to blue, white and ecru. The yellows and pinks creeped in closer to home. The sunrise was so unreal to me it looked like a projection, like a phony backdrop. The hot orange disc of the sun was so full it seemed insincere.

Annie had not yet named her new stationwagon. I suggested Sartoris. It stuck.

RECENT DISCOVERIES

Found antique stereoscopes. $55 each. I am selling my clothes so that I can buy them.

Went to church with Annie for Easter. Despite my hangup on deities, I like the ritual of Episcopal churches. Swinging that lantern of incense all about. My eyes started watering uncontrollably. I'm sure everyone thought I was having a religious experience.

The bad news is that my friends accidentally stood me up at the theatre. The good news is I discovered how much I really enjoy going to the movies by myself.

I've been out walking. I don't do too much talking these days.

Recently visited my high school for the first time since graduation. It turns you can go home again. It's just that the new ghosts have rearranged everything in tiny, frustrating ways. The ceilings seemed lower, the walls closer, the familiar objects moved just an inch to the left or right of where my memory housed it. A maddeningly tidy sort of displacement. I who have had too many homes to return to. The whole visit made me feel strange and serious. Strangeness of people being not at all how you remember them. And then, exactly as you remember them. A best friend come back, dressed all in black and stern.

I get really ridiculous about seeing former teachers. I wish I had it in me to be one of them.

Sitting between two boys on the ride home, oh I have two boys to tell me just how sardonic I am.

Last night we played a hide-and-seek game of sardines at the Gorgas library. Clues include: "dark, crowded, humming," "two reds spell a square," "issuing forth," and "a room without light." Found Annie crouched beneath a basement staircase, Justin hidden behind two red chairs in a corner, Joe in a glass study room with the lights off. I was hiding in plain sight in the periodicals room, reading poetry.