My nephew just had his first birthday.

Last week I stood on the balcony of a beach house with my nephew in my arms, his small fingers wrapped around the slender silver chain around my neck.

I rested my head against his and was startled by just how blue his eyes were.

I began to count back the seconds, minutes, and days, trying to remember a time before the inertia of life had carried me past the point of owning such beautiful potential, when the grace of innocence allowed uncompromised belief.

I couldn’t remember that far back.

I don’t treat my words like they are my children. Hell – I’ve whored out my prose for all kinds of reasons (most of them quite base; I’m a sinner. Lord, am I a sinner!).

So when I say I’m fascinatingly disturbed by some of the places my writing turns up, understand it’s not because I’m possessive of my writing.

I’m simply morbidly amused.

For example, let’s take the following search string that popped up in my Wordpress statistics: “Too far, too little, too much too fast to realign when the signs all say go.”

Put that into Google and the first entry is for a Craigslist ad in Tampa titled “Goddess for Slave”.

I’m actually quite pleased by this one. It’s not the first time I’ve seen my writing show up in a Craigslist ad, and really, I’ve got no objection to people using my writing to find someone with unique tastes.

The next two entries are actually links back to my site and the original post I wrote back in 2005, Crimson Silk.

Then there are a number of links to a CollarMe profile for a female dominant in Florida named Deplore. My guess would be this is the same person who wrote the Craigslist ad. No problem. If she likes the writing enough to feel it can speak for her, I’m tickled pink. Well, perhaps not pink. Tickled crimson, maybe.

…

And then there is this.

Al…right. I mean, he changed the title to ‘Power’ (a rather bland name – I think I may be slightly insulted on behalf of my writing) but the words are generally the same.

And he posted this back in 2007. They must have found it inspiring enough to keep around.

Cool.

But, errr, what’s this?

Isn’t that…? No…it couldn’t be. Did he really…dear god. The horror! To take this post and…and…

It’s like a bad Star Trek episode, where my blog has an evil twin.

Reading through the site is eerie; it’s as if all of my writing has been filtered through the mind of an adolescent goth boy who has taken all of my writing and regurgitated it, turning writing like this into this.

I don’t have a problem with someone stealing my writing. But that just offends my literary sensibilities.

That’s it.

I’m going back to the beach.

To lucid dream, you have to find the signposts in your dreams that will let you know you are sleeping. They are indications that what you are experiencing is a dream. It could be a digital clock that changes time when you look away, or it could be a cell-phone the size of a hardback book that you’re speaking into.

But once you know you are dreaming, you can take control of the dream.

For someone who enjoys control, I am having a remarkably hard time with lucid dreams.

The problem is, I’m not the central character in most of my dreams. My dreams play out in stories.

Intricate, sometimes amusing, often slightly frightening, stories. And since I’m often not in these stories in any active sense, it is difficult to find the signs that would allow me to realize I am dreaming.

And now for some random notes that are absolutely unrelated to dreams, lucid or otherwise:

• My youngest brother has asked me to officiate his wedding next year. It appears that I will, after all, be getting ordained (not a particularly hard endeavor these days). Once it’s official, I’ll start taking confessions and passing out penance. The line forms to the left, please.
• A couple of weeks ago, I crashed my motorcycle taking a turn a little too quickly. It left me bruised and aching in parts I didn’t know existed. But mostly in one piece. I’m now deciding on what my next bike will be.
• My Europe trip looks like it will be set for late October. Amsterdam coffee shops, Paris cabaret and operas, West End shows, and Bruges chocolatiers are all on the itinerary.

If I tell you a story, will you tell me one in return?

—

Art of the Flesh, D’jaevle

Johnny was a boy who drew
with long lazy strokes
leaning loose across an empty page

they said:
’stay within the edges, Johnny! don’t want to murder the margins’

he goes where he wants
though

making poetry of indecision

they considered him
a Kindergarten failure.

it’s not a cop out,
he just
never quite saw the lines
between the spaces

I’m waiting for the storm.

Standing at ocean’s edge, anticipating the winds that will drive the waves high enough to engulf me, it’s not that I want to drown.

I just want to know how it feels to face the current with fierce joy in my heart.

It’s always the line I change that I remember the best.

It’s the trembling that makes me wonder.

when her shivers become something
more
a voiceless cry
expanding from her center
roiling outward in waves
that leave her shaken
and moved
(away from herself)

just how far is she.

A four clove evening, one right after another while I sit at my desk, window open to the rain, and write.

There’s a problem with inspiration; it always comes at a cost, an attachment.

Funny how I see those things as one and the same.

But I want it. I want to peel back the skin and find something bloody and tender. Something to remind me why I still seek to possess something that by its nature is painful to share, and even more painful to lose.

I want to hold something fragile.

A glass rose.

A bead of rain.

You.