XLVI. As asked...

"So the leaves fell,
as you asked them to.

When you asked them.

Like leaden ashes from a cigarette
They fell away, and landed limp
And useless on the ground."
You told me in a text.


"They didn't fall right;
oooooThey didn't burn themselves up
oooooIn that glory and that stomal heartbreak
oooooThat belongs to Fall.
oooooooooo(Or should.)"


"The Fall is new—
oooooAnd here I'm curious—
What did you want from an
Autumn of evergreens
Whose needles prick the seasons
And starve them thin?"

"I told you what I wanted
ooooowith all the words I knew how
oooooto bend around each other."


"But you're leaving here.
And estive leaves won't set themselves alight—
oooooTo fall on you, and through you, and burn you
oooooSo completely, they leave a brand upon your heart—
For a winter you won't wade your long way through."

You told me in a text.

Son of Fun with a Conservative Emailer

Them:

Dear College Republicans,

"Breaking up" sucks, but sometimes it's necessary.
In 2008, Barack Obama acted like he was serious about fixing our country's problems. He said he was going to turn around our ailing economy, create jobs and reduce government debt, deficits and spending. He said a lot of things.
And young Americans believed him and voted for him.
But actions speak louder than words. President Obama hasn't fixed our economy, he hasn't created jobs and he hasn't reduced government debt, deficits and spending.
The ugly truth in relationships is that sometimes people aren't who they seem to be and they say things they don't mean. In that case, all you can do is tell them "it's over," begin picking up the pieces and move on - and make no mistake it's time for young Americans to move on. With nearly 20% of America's youth unable to find work and with more than $4.5 trillion of Obama's wasteful spending put on our tab, it's time to "break up" with President Obama.
Watch the "Break Up" at OurTab.org
I know how you are feeling. You are nervous and uncertain. Breaking up is never easy. But you should "never make someone a priority that makes you an option," right? And has President Obama made America's youth a priority? If so, would he have added more than $4.5 trillion to our tab when 1 in 5 of us can't even find work? I think you know the answer to that...
The bottom line is young Americans deserve better. We deserve someone that won't act differently around his friends in Congress than he acts around us. We deserve someone who won't just say things when he wants something. It was good while it lasted, but we're done. It's time to "break up" with President Obama - and thousands of young people already have.
Yesterday, 30,000 people "broke up" with President Obama by watching the College Republicans first-ever TV ad, called the "Break Up," online at OurTab.org.
Check out the "Break Up" at OurTab.org

If you have friends who are going through the same thing with their president, please reach out to them by posting the video on Facebook. Everyone deserves to be in a good relationship, but that can't happen if they're still in a bad one.

Oh, and before I forget, after you watch the video, I have a friend I'd like to introduce you to. He's for real when he says he wants to jumpstart our economy, create good-paying jobs and cut-down on government debt, deficits and stupid spending. His name is Republican Party. I'll tell you more about him some other time, but for now you can check out his plans to eradicate the deficit by 2019 and eliminate the entire national debt by 2080 at OurTab.org - plans that would really get our economy going and create jobs.

Anyway, I'm glad we were able to talk about this. I know it may not feel like it now, but this is really for the best.

Sincerely,

Jeremy Hagen
Executive Director
College Republican National Committee

http://info.crnc.org/index.php?q=civicrm/mailing/optout&reset=1&jid=128&qid=6903817&h=4e1c9abde38fadb1


My response

To:
Jeremy Hagen
Executive Director
College Republican National Committee
http://info.crnc.org/index.php?q=civicrm/mailing/optout&reset=1&jid=128&qid=6903817&h=4e1c9abde38fadb1

From:
Nicholas Adams
Entry Level Intern
Nicholas Adams Enterprises

Dear Jeremy Hagen Executive Director College Republican National Committee http://info.crnc.org/index.php?q=civicrm/mailing/optout&reset=1&jid=128&qid=6903817&h=4e1c9abde38fadb1,

I have, ye as the evening approaches, received your email regarding the impending dissolution of our country's relationship with Barack Obama, and it has, ye as the evening approaches, given me occasion to worry, as the evening approaches. I was hoping that, in writing you, I might avail myself of your considerable sympathies in putting to rest some of my concerns. I'm doing this freestyle, as your email seems to have been written, so while there will be inspiringly few grammatical errors, there might yet remain the odd dangling modifier, unstopped glottal (applicable only if you're reading this aloud to yourself, or are having it dictated to you. I don't mean "dictated" as in "instructed by forceful coercion", but rather "conveyed vocally in song", and which, you'll agree, I can, in no way, be held accountable for), thought forgotten halfway through its expression, noun-verb disagreement that escalates into full-bore subject-object nuclear bombardment, or run-on sentence. So, please keep that in mind when formulating your assuredly charitable judgements concerning style (élan? I think so), tact, and questionable expenditure of (I must admit) not very valuable time.

To expound upon that point, the not-very-valuable time point, let me just say that I am youngish. Not young-proper, mind you, but youngish. I'm 25, with a liberal arts degree from a very large and mildly prestigious state-chartered university, but I'm no longer in college, making my inclusion on your list the regrettable evidence of your simply not keeping up. (Possessive pronouns take the gerund form of the verb when it, the verb, is being used as a noun. Keep reading, you'll see how it's done) That aside, I did appreciate the consideration of your email, as I've enjoyed correspondence with your organization before (http://nycad2.blogspot.com/2009/03/fun-with-conservative-emailer.html), and I got the impression that your organization enjoyed it also. So, I'm 25, going on 26 (musical allusion), and, too recently, I was kind of one of those people whom your email described when you wrote——in what I can only imagine was likely an altered state of some kind, cerebra-chemically speaking——"With nearly 20% of America's youth unable to find work...". I was kind of who you were talking about because I'm youthish. But, ye as financial collapse approached, much as evening approaches now, I found a job through up-by-bootstraps-pulling pluck! And so, it is from this vantage of secure employment that I write you, Jeremy Hagen,not only, as mentioned before, for your sympathies, but also to offer my services to you and yours as your diligent amanuensis. I'll hold while you look that up. I don't think they have that word, or several others with which I am well-acquainted, in Missouri. I would like this email to serve as my cover letter, to which end I will go about convincing you of my exceedingly well-honed skills in the ways of words and women and warlords and warlocks. Oh, I know so much about Warlocks, Jeremy Hagen, it would really knock your socks off, some of the shit I know about warlocks (Strunk and White advise against excessive profanity, but they're some prickly old blowhards. When they're not dead. Which they are. Well, one of them.). And while I'll admit to being sometimes bogged down in my own little cul-de-sac of onanistic free-association, please bear with me, for I am both persuasive and right.

My primary concern, Jeremy Hagen, is the specious conception of the narrative arc of your email. Specious, and then some! To other, less cosmically gifted observers of things and noters of errors, there would be in its format a wry wit and the piquant taste of satire, but, sir, to me it looks like you've put the carriage before the horse. By which I mean, you're exhorting your audience to break up with President Obama. You're writing to Republicans, you lunatic! (The exclamation point should not be used in formal prose.) You were not dating the President. In the proper application of this metaphor, the president was more like the guy who came into your dorm room (Do you live in the dorms still, Jeremy Hagen) to suggest getting a league together for some ultimate (cultural references can help you connect to your audience, but, without care, can be distancing to those not in the know), to which suggestion you began screaming "Rape!" over and over and over again until your throat was hoarse and even you believed it, and the guy——who, you'll recall, is a stand-in for President Obama——is forced to explain himself, with a guilt stain running down his shirt, to an accusing audience whose prejudices and clearly-observable snap judgments have the guy so flummoxed that no defense is possible. Understand the metaphor? That's the actual scenario, and whether you're right in screaming "Rape", or whether your rape scenario is better for the dorm hall's health and well-being than the guy's Ultimate league is immaterial. Let us sit with our feet firmly positioned in the stirrups of the proper metaphor if we're going to ride the thing through 11 paragraphs of your smug and logy prose! So, that's my issue with your metaphor. But, again, you're writing to Republicans, all of whom, to carry my much-superior (by merit of its full measure of devotion/fidelity (Lincoln reference!, did you see it?)) metaphor, are the other students who don't like Ultimate, and think rape is a much more likely scenario when considering what the guy looks like.

In your email, you used the notion of breaking up as a metaphor for conveying your perceived need to elect a Republican congress, and you did it to Republicans, bankrupting (on a conceptual level) something like three quarters of what you said from behind your metaphorical scrim. There, I summarized.

Grammatically, your entire email should be subpoenaed (I spelled that correctly the first time; I should be offered a job just for that) to appear before the Grammar Grand Jury, and give full account of its sins, and how it knew it was in the wrong, but was it being written by somebody whose respect for language sits somewhere far below his respect for metaphorical accuracy or prudence, and that it should be allowed to serve a just and merciful term, laboring beneath a red pen, whereupon it would emerge with scars, to be sure, but also, with righteousness at its back. You messed up on the first sentence! Who does that?! (The "interbang" is a punctuation mark that has never caught on, but which combines the exclamation point and the question mark.) You wrote "'Breaking up' sucks, but sometimes it's necessary." Strunk and White argue, and here I agree with the half-dead blowhards, that enclosing colloquialisms (first time; bam!) in quotation marks is condescending and smarmy; also, the colloquialism you chose to enclose is "breaking up", a phrase so well-known, I think Hirohito might have used it. It doesn't belong. Also, "but sometimes" is a prepositional phrase, and therefore needs a comma after it.

I wish I had more time to do a line-by-line recap of your terribly conceived, horrendously executed, and poorly targeted email, but I get to go home now, so I don't need this to entertain me anymore. I'm breaking up with you, Jeremy Hagen, and will hereafter rely on masturbation to satisfy my… governmental needs…? Aw, hell, your metaphor is still shit, even ye as evening approaches.

I made myself so easy to love,

Nicholas Adams
Entry-level Intern
Nick Adams Enterprises

P.s. I might do that line-by-line tomorrow, depending on how bored I get. I'll get back to you. Though you said "30,000 people 'broke up' (sic) with President Obama by watching the College Republicans (sic) first-ever TV ad, called the "Break Up," (sic) online (sic.) at OurTab.org (sic)." I wasn't even being funny there! There were five legitimate errors in that sentence! My point, though, is that you can't YouTube breakup. It's uncouth.

XLV. Bed-Time Epistle

To my blanket beside me,
*******I don't mean to lead you on
*******by sitting you afresh upon my sheets
*******every morning, like your services will be called upon that night.

*******But I'm supposed to be an adult now,
*******and while I give little enough account for my own maturity,
*******I have heard that it's the little things that make a difference.
*******And making my bed is a really little thing.

*******I know this will be hard for you to understand,
*******Not least because you're a blanket, and therefore
******(Friends are honest with each other)
*******Ill-equipped for understanding,
*******But also because
******(You might say, if you could or cared)
**************The drop from the bed to the floor
*********************is a little thing, which
****************************Makes a difference.

*******"And there is, it seems, a certain malice
**************in your predictable caprice--
*******Set me up, just to knock me down,"
******(You'd quip, if you weren't merely a blanket,
**************And you felt angry with me.)

*******But to be completely fair,
*******The mercury's too high for you,
*******Too humid, hot apocalyptic,
**************Like leather-wrapped sauna pews
*******And this really isn't your shining hour.

*******I'm not breaking up with you, or keeping you on the hook
*******I'm just waiting for the earth to turn
**************For the leaves on the trees to catch fire
**************And burn the Summer heat away

**************For the sun to settle down
**************for the air to thicken up

*******I'll call you when I need you, at year's end
*******Because
******(As you'd appreciate, if you weren't just a blanket)
*******You're everything I need in an ill-weather friend.

P.s. When you writhe against me,
Like a downy white worm,
I get a little creeped out.

A Very Short Story (Will Likely Be Deleted Quickly)

She'd grown so tired of the world and its wind, so weary and drawn taut along her seams, where her soul met her body, that she retreated finally into her room, where her table legs banged at opposite corners from the fierce wind that raced around and around but sometimes snuck in, turned the table, then grew melancholy silent still and stale. The room, in all its familiarity, would be her world surrogate. It was manageable and quantifiable, and all the dust was hers and her. Hidden away with her books, and her table, and her dust that was her and all the memories of all lost things whose absence hollowed out the world, she began, in earnest, to decipher herself.

Her impulses took shape, her thoughts were gradually given structure, syntax, and all her emotions revealed, finally, their bleak grammar to she who should have known it best. And so accustomed, as she was, to spreading herself out in the most unexpurgated way, she began to draft herself upon the walls that were her horizon. Every day, her charcoal hands would make more erratic marks on the surface, strange little figures, tracing out the lyrical contours of her very soul. Each mark upon every wall was another secret part of herself, given dimension (two of them, in fact), and with each outpouring of herself, her soul stretched out a fraction more from the nucleus, the core, until each glyph began its slow constriction back, drawing with it the walls,. The contours of her life had been forced into a strange and foreign geometry by her methodical self-exegesis, and were slowly righting themselves. Every wall fell inward, in and in, drawn in by the elastic tethers of her personal gravity, hawsing the walls toward their source, and the wind grew smaller and louder. All the parts of herself, which she'd written out, carried the walls, hewing now to a greater command than nails or function.

When they found the room, a well-defined negative space, it was caution taped off, but nobody could say how much tape they used, and it was photographed, and it was described as a very queer thing, and then it was left to be. Nobody ever entered the room, how could they, nor could they quite describe the shape of her perfect singularity.

XLIV. A Simple, Fucking Text Field

"But, I want to impress you."
"You don't have to impress me; just tell me a story."
"I want you to think… I want you to be impressed—"
"I will be. Just tell me a story."
"And I want it to be original. I need that."
"When did you get like this?"

"I've always been like this—I'm just now introducing myself."
"Just tell me a story…"

XLIII. To Anna, In Winter.

What I saw in a stone
Was a thick rime, too much the same.
Was the cold start of February;
The cold beginnings of the second month;
The first year of the second decade; the third millenium.
A second take of the promise of a new year.
A double-take glance with second thoughts,
But a hanging smile left suspended
When the face fell.

XLII. Role Call

...
You were the first cusp of failure caught and held like a cloud above the sheets.
You were my first How can this not be love?
You were my first disappointed, sympathetic look.
You were my first conditional unconditional drawn taut against a moral plank and snapped to leave a mark upon the great divide that never fell.
You were my first regret. The gateway regret that let in all the regrets that followed.
You were my first intimidation.
You were my first "Let me inspire you" and why do only you get to see above us both?
You were my first terrifying phone call that I would take again tonight and every night for the rest of my life, in bed or Brooklyn or Buckhead.
You were my first apathy. My first nonplussed, unremarkable, even, and I felt it and it shook me and I stared.
You were my first kiss and the first one I'd take back if I could and you grabbed greedily for both all at once.
You were my first broken heart.
You were my first hand-held quivering voice, I promise I can get this out, just wait.
You were the first broken heart I noticed that wasn't mine.
You were my first phone call with my first cell, and you were so many other firsts, that I lost count the only time I ever counted.
You were the first unequivocal mistake I made more than twice.
You were my first friend for life for three or four years.
...