The Meridian

I can feel it coming.
The meridian of my life--
my back will break
and when they repair it they'll
be sure it can carry the weight of
Adult Responsibility.

Meridians always seem
bad for the younger of our race:
Remember Herod before Anno Domini?

It will be strange for a time,
saying "When I was a kid,"
when referring to last week.
Stranger still when stories become
children's stories and adult films
become films.

I should be writing furiously,
taking photographs, filling scrapbooks
leaving memos, momentos, memories:
I mustn't forget all the things I know now.
But already I'm worried about the next elections,
My imminent taxes, a future mortgage.

I save scribbling for another day.

Ghost

If I were a ghost I'd be the friendly kind,
Leaving small flowers on doorsteps
and helping old ladies across the street.
I 'd only haunt my grave
to see who came to remember me.
Vengeful ghosts get all the attention:
Jacob Marley, La Llorona, the Flying Dutchman.
But I'd rather be kind and quiet
than loud and famous--even if
it means no one visits my grave.

Be Wild

I like to take risks.
Like putting my socks on before my underwear.
That's something new.
I always wear my underwear, though.

I never told her I loved her.

The Orange in your Eyes

Hard times happen all of a sudden like lightening striking your house or grandpa falling asleep for the last time. Hard times create little fractures that break across the face of your life and stay there no matter where you look. 

When I was little I would wake up too early and put goggles on and go skiing all day. When I would get home, I'd take the goggles off and be amazed at how blue the world seemed. The orange tint of the goggles had protected my vision. I wouldn't notice it in my eyes until I took the goggles off. 

Good times are like the orange in your eyes. Good times grow slowly, have been there so long you forget you have them. 

Hard times happen like fireworks. Good times happen like ivy creeping up a wall. 

Notice the good times when the orange is still on your eyes, not when the goggles are ripped off and the piercing blue is all you can see. 

Momento Mori

Sometimes I realize that I don't know what I'm doing with my life. Most of the time when that happens I just try to stuff the thought back down my throat and tuck it behind my liver where it belongs. Other times I let the thought swirl around in front of my eyes, and after a while it airs out and stops smelling so much like bile. Other times I imagine an envelope floating directly over my head that's addressed to me and has all the answers and someday I'll tear open its paper lips and my wrinkled fingers will tremble as they unfold the letter and read the strange writing:

"Dear Mr. Turner,

This letter is empty because you already know everything that's going to happen to you because your life is over now.

Love, 

Death"

And then I'll wonder where Death learned to speak English, and die.

A Big Day for Wesley

A few months ago I learned that a short story of mine was going to be featured in a literary journal. As my first legitimate publication, it was a big day for me to see it online. I look forward from many 'big days' in the future, most of which will hopefully be unrelated to my literary endeavors. For now, I'm content to look up my short story everyday, just to know that it's there.

You can read "So Close to Heaven" here.

What Do You See Out There?

"Mama?"
"Mm?"
"Mom?"
"Yes."
"I was wondering about dying."
"..."
"Lettie said that when you die a man with a white face and black robes comes and takes your soul right out of your mouth, and that your soul looks like the bud of a small white flower with a firefly trapped inside. I told Lettie she was a liar because I hadn't heard anything like that before and Lettie says a lot of things. But is it true? Is it really like that, Mama?"
"..."
"Mom?"
"Mm?"
"Is it true?"
"No dear, death isn't beautiful. Not like that."
"Is that why you wait by the window?"
"..."
"What are you looking for, Mama? What do you see out there?"

Secrets in her Fists

She held her secrets in her fists
like birds still wanting breath.
But when she called I came to her
Walked between the shadows of trees
Felt autumn wind in our lungs
Counted the clouds.
I would have whispered "I love you,"
But they were just three words and
I was just one person with a heart
too small for words so big and it felt
cruel to say something possibly untrue.
I could see the reflections
of clouds in her eyes, moving slowly
away from us. She whispered "I love

the way the leaves whisper in the trees.
What are they saying, do you think?"

The Brave

Some people look upon the burning world
and say very matter-of-fact-ly that
Even the sweetest cake contains a teaspoon of salt
then put their sunglasses on
their heads down
and trudge along the hot coals.

But the brave, of whom I'm not part,
look into the celestial fire,
Its colors, its stifling heat, and say:
"Let it cauterize my soul."
Then spread their arms wide
and relish in the panic.

The Lives I'm Not Living

 A very wise man* once wrote a book, and in that book there is a line that consists of these words: "Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living."

Which makes me wonder about all the lives that I'm not living. Science tells us that there are infinite universes, with infinite possibilities such that in some green skied world, a Wesley very much like myself is typing at the kitchen table of his mother's home wondering about the lives he too isn't living. A similar Wesley types in a world with an orange sky, and another in a world overrun with Okapis, and another in a world that rejected footwear. A plump Wesley types in a world where the United States split during their Civil War, and a blonde haired Wesley lives in a world where the bombing of Guernica never happened, and Picasso's masterpiece never came to be. In an even greater infinity of worlds, Wesley never comes to fruition at all. His great grandpa didn't leave his prosperous bakery in Southern Germany and instead ended up fighting on the Nazi side in World War II, where he died and his son and granddaughter, my mother, were never born. In another universe, Wesley becomes the leader of a cultish group who oppose bathing.

 In another world, Eve refused the fruit, and all of humanity remains hidden inside of her. 

But these Wesleys don't tug on my insides like some of the other Wesleys do. Not like the very similar Wesleys who handle things better, who don't lie awake sometimes wondering what they could have done to circumvent pain and sorrow. The Wesleys who are selfless and noble and better. When I think about them my bones feel heavy under the weight of the life that I'm now living.  

But another thought comes. Let's use a simple example: If Wesley had whined less as a child, and been a better Wesley, his father might have believed him sooner when six-year-old Wesley broke his leg skiing once. But how would non-whiny six-year old Wesley have learned the consequences of being a whiny four and five-year-old without, say, breaking his leg? How would Great-Grandpa Niederlein have learned to trust his instincts if he had never left his bakery in Southern Germany? How would Eve have learned the joys of motherhood had she kept all those babies inside of her? 

Like her, we eat and are crushed, but only so we can learn to lift the weight placed upon our backs. 

*Jonathan Safron Foer, in his Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Nothings and Somethings

Sometimes, when I'm alone in my bed, I curl up really tight, like an armadillo, and try to squeeze myself into nothingness. It hasn't worked yet. I think a lot of people are afraid of being nothing, which I am too but not for the same reasons. A lot of people say things like, "I need to be something. I want something. Make something of yourself" but I don't think it would sad to be nothing. I think it would be a really good time. For one thing, you wouldn't be having to go to the bathroom all the time, which is a problem I have, and also you could float around your room since gravity wouldn't be able to grab you anymore. Although, you might miss talking to your mom on Sundays because your larynx wouldn't exist anymore, and likewise you couldn't change things up by dying your hair a new color. But I've never done that. I think I wrote that in case there were any girls reading this, and they wanted to know a little bit about what it would be like to be nothing. Another thing about being nothing that I wanted to say is that if you were nothing you could be a lot of other things. You could be an astronaut, or a deep sea diver, or an airplane, because you wouldn't need any air. You could also be a camel, cause they don't need water most of the time, and also a squid. The only hard thing about being nothing, like I said, would be watching all the other people and having to stay at home, which would be hard even if your home was a volcano (which you could do if you were nothing), because you would be really lonely. And also finding places to stay, because there's a whole of of somethings around and less and less nothings. It would be hard too if you were watching people you really loved and they were having a hard time, and there wasn't anything you could do about it except watch it happen because they were a something and you were a nothing. It would be even harder if there was somebody you really loved, but they had you in their heart, because you were Nothing and everybody should be full of Something. I bet if you tried really hard you could undo the nothing, and be a little bit of something, and maybe that little bit of something would be just what they needed, which makes me wonder how many nothings are floating around, helping me out when I have a really hard day.

Easter

They say Christ died for us in that garden and suffered for our sins and that the weight of it all squeezed the blood out of him like an olive press does to an olive. And I believe them, even though I wonder how much weight it takes to crush Jesus Christ. They say too that while he was in the garden he felt all the sadness we felt, and that because of that he can judge us perfectly. And I believe them there too. But even if you don't, I think you can still wonder about all the sadness that crushed Jesus Christ, who conquered even death. All the heartaches, the disappointments the siblings he watched die of cancer, how many tons of grain and rice and cotton he harvested until his thumbs bled, how much frostbite and all the hunger the goodbyes the miles walked away from home the cuts scrapes scars the abandonment left crying alone in your closet crawling from Tennessee to Oklahoma on your bare knees smelling the odor of your loved one's ashes of gunshots and shipping off to foreign shores and the smoke on the thirtieth floor stinging your eyes or down in that mine choking your breath and loss loss loss. It's all loss and that weight you feel in your heart that you can hardly bear. Our hearts are fragile. That weight doesn't have to be much. I don't care how you divide it, seven billion times anything is a lot, and that doesn't include all the people way back when. What would the world's sorrow weigh? I wonder sometimes if with all the sorrows trials and tribulations, if he felt all the joys too. And if he did, whether he divided it up so that he had all the trials and then could look forward to all the joys, or else if they were all mixed together like how we have it. And then I wonder if he felt the joys that came from bad things, like getting away with stealing, and if it was on the tribulation side or the joy side. And if the joys were so much that they hurt him too. The earth weighs 59,721,900,000 kg (131,664,251,759.7 lbs). It's such a big number it doesn't even matter that we are on it, the mass is still the same. They estimate 107,602,707,791 people have lived on the earth so far. And let's assume that during their whole life everyone accumulates just one pound of sorrow, then sorrow alone would be almost the weight of the world. And that's not counting all the babies waiting to be born and that's not counting all of the sins, and all the people who carry a lot more sorrow in their hearts. All the sins are just ways of keeping sorrow in your heart anyway. I'm not trying to evangelize here, I'm just saying that's a whole lot of sorrow, and a whole lot of world. But let me tell you, all the sorrow and all the pain and trial and tribulation would be a lot less heavy if we started helping each other out and lifting each other's loads. And if we stopped forgetting what each other was. Choosing sides is important, we all need to do what we think is right. But not if it makes us forget that He suffered just as much for them as he did for us. Even if you don't believe in Him don't forget that. Don't forget that everyone has a mother somewhere. Don't forget that judging someone doesn't make you any better than them, but more importantly that telling someone to stop judging you doesn't make you any better than them. Because we're all heavy, and all our hearts are creeping down our rib cage and they're going to keep creeping until we stop the dichotomies. It just makes the world heavier. It just makes us forget that it is a heavy world around us, that we got to stick together else the world's sure to cave in on itself.

She Told Me

She told me she couldn't stop laughing,

but she didn't have to because 

I could hear each giggle hopping like frogs from her lips.

She told me she had stars in her eyes, 

but she didn't have to because

I was already tracing Orion's belt and searching for Polaris.

She told me she had butterflies in her stomach, 

but she didn't have to because 

she hiccuped and one fluttered out.

The Groom

The trees weren't sure where she came from that December's eve. They had been conversing quietly among themselves, shaking a branch here and there in approval, when she collapsed in their frozen grove. Her breath came out in clouds before her face as she lay there a few moments. There were no gossiping flowers or feathered birds to attend to her, so the leafless trees became her bridesmaids. They wove twigs through her hair, left leaves on the backs of her hands. The sky set to work weaving a delicate dress out of snowflakes, glistening as it fell upon her back. Ice crept through her hair, forming a  ghostly bridal veil, while her periwinkle toes sprouted from the bottom of her gown. Days went on and still her groom never shone is dreary face. Soon wildflowers sprouted through her hair, through the holes in her skull, made bracelets around her wrists. In autumn the leaves wove too-late mittens around her hands, lay like earrings beside her alabaster face. Still she lay alone, her groom as absent as her flesh.  By next spring, the flowers covered every part of her, their roots filling her body like veins, hyacinths swirling out of her sternum. At last the pale-faced groom arrived to take her home with him, at last his dark cloak appeared where she had lain for a year. But he could not take her: she was laughing in the leaves above him, her heart beating in the earth below, and every flower cooing, "It is warm here" in her sweet sing-song voice.

Love is a Clichè

My friend fell in love once,
so I asked him what it was like.
He told me that
Love is that feeling when your heart
gets so full of sweetness that it turns into
a beautiful marshmallow, and every time it
beats it feels like a cotton-candy cloud is
tickling your insides, causing you to laugh at every
passing second, making your joy swell to the point
of swooning, but instead rainbows just burst out of your mouth
every time you exhale and every time you inhale your
lungs fill up with bubbles made of dreams and your eyes get clouded
every passing moment by the daffodils that won't stop sprouting from them,
falling to the ground every time you blink, leaving a trail of yellow petals
everywhere you go like some majestic slug who instead of oozing slime provides the world
with such feelings of affection as to look upon it instantly instills the viewer with such profound
palpitations that their heart, nay, their soul is prone to brusting into a cloud of glitter, wafting ever closer to heaven.

Needless to say, I don't think I've ever been in love.

(In/a)spire

Inspire denotes to blow into or breathe in. 
Along with inspire
comes aspire. Note the same root spire
Which means to breathe.

Inspiration has a lot of sources.
The inspiration for the titles
Transcendentalist, Mormon and Quaker
All came from their critics.
The inspiration for the walls of ancient cities,
Sprouted out of progress and prosperity.

Ironic.

There is good inspiration,
When the Muse blows into your chest
Like CPR.
Except the air goes straight to the back of the neck
Where it pushes all your hairs up and waits to be itched.

Maybe inspire and aspire are so closely connected
to breathing, because from the first surprised and blinking breath we take
til the last one slithers off our tongue,
We are doing always that human hoping.

A Haiku

by Wesley Turner


I spent ten minutes
Writing these three lines for you.
I hope you like them.

On Concussions

My roommate got five stars stitched into his head.

And a Concussion.

He didn't remember any of it. Or any of the day before. Or the day before.

This morning he woke up and found a note that informed him of his situation. It also told him to take some pills for nausea if he had any. By then, he remembered the day before, and the day before the day before. But he didn’t remember the accident or the hospital. 

What if while he was in the emergency room there was a little girl in the chair next to him, and he told her not to be scared and they had a really great conversation? He doesn't remember it if he did. He doesn't remember a whole person. 

Maybe.


What if you got hit harder? Seven stars hard. What if you forgot who you were and no one left any notes? What if you had to relearn everything about yourself?

Would it be like, you had to find out that person you were so you could be yourself again?

Or would it be compare and contrast? You know. Who you were and who you want to be.

Japan

Sometimes I think about Japan.

And when I do it's like a film I
need to get around to seeing.

Even though tickets are fifteen
hundred dollars instead of eight
fifty.

And there are no subtitles or
rental stores that will have it
in three months because the
Projectionist inserted the reel
three thousand years ago
and doesn't care that I’m missing it.

So sometimes I go to the internet

and look up pictures of Japan.
walk under scarlet pagodas
feel the warmth of secluded onsen
converse with statues of mysterious pasts and
for a moment stop worrying so much about
movies and subtitles.

Following Your Dreams (And other Terrible Ideas)

A cautionary tale:

This semester has been kicking my trash so far. If I'm not at work I'm at school, if I'm not at school I'm in the library, if I'm not at the library I'm stuffing my face with a handfull of Frosted Flakes and putting pants on simultaneously.

And I'm trying to like English. 

Like in Highschool, when I would drink in the pages and feel the words dripping between my ribs. When the ink would stain my bones black and white. When wet flakes of paper could be found between my teeth.

Now things are different:
Read. Deconstruct. Interpret. Next.
Read. Deconstruct. Interpret. Next.

I think I have a dangerous disease. I think the reason I'm not enjoying reading as much as I used to is because I'm not writing myself.

And now suddenly I think I'm going to have to write and write till my wrists break and my eyes turn cold and gray. I think I'm going to have to pay for an education in writing. I think I'm going to make a terrible decision and start listing "Writer" under my intended life plan, with my intended major being "Starvation".

I don't think this is a good idea, I don't advocate it, and I don't think it will turn out well for me. But I don't think I can bear not to write. When I swallow the words and push them into the darkest depths of my stomach I feel them burning ulcers, escaping into my blood, crawling beneath my skin.

My point is, I'm going to start vomiting my excess words here as often as I can. Anecdotes, imagery, even perhaps an occasional poem (gross). I'm hoping you get something out of it. And, if you don't, that I'll realize it soon enough to switch to Business or Accounting.

You know, something practical.