Dis-Ease

What was stranger yet was the sudden silence. A familiar absence that weaved its way into the days, showing no effect on action or consequence, not even daring to elicit a sense of loss, just noticed as an old familiar absence.

Meaningless comes to mind, but then, what is meaning?

Source: It becomes more difficult to express one’s self when what you want to convey cannot be satisfied with written words; when infliction of voice, slowness of breath, the cover of darkness, tactile tenderness, all beg for the limelight.

One cup of tea promises to solve it, and outside the screened windows of my tower, far below on the cracked cement streets, the evening is on fire with the alcoholic breath of all the young people dehydrating their youth with smoke and fermented beverages. Separate and singular, my head bends and my lips gingerly proceed to sip the chamomile that has seeped into the hot water. White ceramic mug radiates heat, making a home from the small comforts we can afford.

If you ever find yourself disorientated in the water, unable to find which way is up, be still and exhale the last of your breath. As you do, feel the bubbles rush by your face, let them lead you to the surface. It seems we are the very thing we need to find our way.

For me, the image of you below the depths, serves to slow you still enough to study. Where hair expresses as much as arms and weightless body finds its true form thus loosing its affection for clothing. I note the expanse of your lungs, the wideness of your toes, suspended by a trust that fish have no use for; time and age cannot own you beneath the rocking tide. With skin slickened beyond the chance of possession, eluding capture and definition, I almost wish the bubbles wouldn’t guide you, would testify falsely to the direction of sun and lead you down to deeper depths, the sunless parts that keep the cold, where my fingers would wrap around your ankles as water weeds and add you to the garden in my sea. Still enough to study.

It is a slowing in the heart, a patience patterned by disappointment, where expectations are slaughtered in silence and no one cries for their demise. Schooled in the pursuing of lips, tired of my own touch, I stand as a woman-child, as a dreamer, and offer an infectious smile. Eager enthusiasm is my disease.

apply thus

i consider myself an expert
on all matters perpitudious
an expeditious pernicous sole
of a shoe;

but seriously:

why do you want to know me?
isn't it enough that i work till
the skin peels off callouses and
the wood of the shovel gets stained.
isn't it enough that i haul stones
on my back up hills sisyphused and on
the horizon, bleak notions of
this semblance (the soil has gone
sandy and the sweet corn tastes
like nails) -if i could list myself
for you, would that be enough?

here, i sum myself:
itchy toes
nostril hairs
curly back
dry knuckles


an expert on all things extraneous

declarations of love lost in translation through generations of transistor radios

I wrote this on your back last night when I shouldn't have been focused on the stretch of your skin:


And I think we'll find there's a good reason for hope in all of this.

Precedence comes in the form of nights we know we have to live and loves we can't shake off. This, I feel, breeds a grip strong enough for keeping the important things close at heart, even in gale-force winds going the speed of a feeling sinking to the bottom of what we can't contain.

I gave you an escape hatch & Friday night courage between knobs of your lower vertebrae, so please don't fall and break anything important.

X Marks The Spot

Let me tie up my hair like an inventor and tell you, I found mica in the parking lot. I collected crumbling chunks in my hands and let it shine up my skin. Fists full I walked down to the water and placed small piles of stone shine on each bench. In my mind, I heard the children asking, “What is this?” They’d collect it up in their little hands like treasure and some sensitive guardian would tell them all about mica, searching some ancient memory from high school science class or an episode on the discovery channel.
As a child, I thought it held some value adults were unable to realize, and I’d collect it, catalog it in old ninja turtle lunchboxes, waiting for the day my discovery would be significant.

Lay down in this dead grass for me. I half hope your body will encourage it to green. There is sun now for your face; there is wind now for your lungs. You travel on sparks through gray matter posed and limited in your activities; gifts are strung around your neck and poured over your face as offerings for inspiration and destruction.

I look at what has made us, dirty clothes and winter worn idols. I make dinner and shower with simple products. I’ve got a jeweled crown and pills to take; my bed is unmade and my hair avoids the brush. And from your parallel, resting in your own orbit, what makes you human, warm blood and cold fingers. What marks your skin, dirties your clothes and leaves you smiling like a happy Buddha?

Still shoed, I dangled my feet over the side of a foot bridge.
I smiled at a stranger on the street and they smiled back.
I am almost out of milk in the fridge and it is only Monday.

Could you find me if you wanted to, would you know the path to take?

6:00 AM

there is steam, like spirits, rising off the pond
loons, woodpeckers, robins.
sonofabitch, barking.

No Turtles Yet

We went down to the water where we looked like old age and played like first timers. We found a salamander, then two and contemplated cannibals that snatch beneath decomposing leaves. A water scorpion blended in and didn’t take kindly to the pokes of our dried out sticks. A school of fish eluded us and swam to deeper water as our shadows eclipsed their playground. We circled the pond, looking for bigger life, for something to hold or swordfight. Dead grass clung to our jeans and the skippers skimming the water panicked as we got closer; they skated in manic circles, unaware of the scorpions below the surface, resting and waiting to end the dance. Two salamanders took to mating at the tip of my stick, which I had eased in, to point them out. And every now and then, the wind would obscure our view of the busy world below but we stood on those soggy banks and waited for the water to settle.

Lights out

It's time to turn out the lights and shut everything down and yet I can still hear you breathing. You're hiding under the desk, the one I always look under in case there's a monster, but today, I'll just walk right by. I'll let you live inside this empty building like a crab returning to it's shell and you'll thank me. But in the end, you'll wish you'd left because now you're stuck and it'll take a hell of a lot more than a light switch to entice you out.

Let Down Your Hair

I live three floors above the dryer duct and the smell of warm clothes tumbling, comes through my open window when I work. I welcome the scent, thinking I am a bit warmer, a bit closer to the concept of “home” when it joins me.
Can you imagine me, high up in my tower with dirty fingers and straight lips? My copper hair weaves itself around my face, defying attempts to tame it. Weak backed and wicked minded, it’s been almost two weeks and I’m beginning to stalk him like prey. He leans on moons out of my orbit and tells me he’s tried it all before. He likes to say, “Love is made of greater things.” And with a humble heart, I agree, but the beast within me growls, hungry.
It’s been almost two weeks and I’m beginning to stalk him like prey.

wordform

i've been scrawling stories in less words
than i think with, balking on these condensed
narratives like condensed soup from cans that
i found on the backs of shelves: date 5/5/1915
best before. best before i realize that the words
aren't really worth it; sometimes its hard to try
and reconcile things - what is a writer? what is a
poet? where does this even go?

poetry is the basic creation of a word form.
prose is the expansion of word form.
conversation is the dilation of word form.
thought is the purest word form.
thought is the word form that the men can only see shadows of on the wall.

Night of the living alive.

Something didnt really feel right, and yet nothing was wrong.
He brought us to a bangin restaurant,
We shared a 5 course meal. I was the only one to stomach my entire portion; even the grappa.
BEST STEAK IN THE WORLD
We hung out with the locals for hours.

In the early morning, we went to his place.
He surprised us with a gift from a friend of his.
Soon after, we left.
We embarked on a multiple mile walk back home, but not without detouring to the usual spot.
No cabineri this time.

I didnt sleep last night, so early in the morning I left home in hopes of catching a sunset.
Damn condensation. Freaking fog, rolling over the hills. Clouds everywhere.
It was still nice. Even with Bukowski in front of me, and warm juice in my satchel.
With all of the city asleep and dreaming, the birds got to sing uninterupted.
I think they were extra loud, for me, a once-in-a-while audience.

This couldnt end at a better time.

how is that artist creative?

a string was tying up the inside of his ear.  He said it hurt when he pulled it, but it was affecting his hearing, so he was trying anyway.  I suggested maybe it meant something really deep, like he's got something locked up inside him that needed to be set free, or maybe he's heard something, good or bad, that he will never forget. 

He said "Na, it was probably because I slept on my ear funny and it hurt and affected my dreams"

I said "hmm..."

He Could Never Know I Surfaced

I dreamt last night, that I protected him from the radiation blast by pushing his body deeper under the water and covering him with myself. I knew I had been exposed, but I neglected to tell him as we climbed into the boat. My hair streaked white, I turned to cough and my cupped hand filled with blood. He asked if I was okay. I wiped my mouth, and turned back to him, running my bloody hand until clean across the back of my dress. “I’m fine,” I said and grabbed the chain that was already in his hands. I helped him pull the anchor aboard. I knew I’d never reach the horizon but I just might get him far enough to make it for the both of us.

dragonflies

she's got dragonflies caught in her hair buzzing around and the wings are getting crushed up. it looks beautiful, she says, like fairy dust. he says she's killing dragonflies and tries to pick them out of her hair slowly. it's too late. their wings got holes in them and they'll never fly again.

Confused- That is all

I need to make up my mind. Something that's been bugging me lately. But every time I make up my mind it unravels after awhile and keeps coming back.

God, I don't know people very well do I. I don't know a lot of things.

Emitted in the Dark

There has to be a reason to sink beneath the blankets and force myself to sleep. Otherwise, I float above and daydream impossibilities. There above, my sexual fantasies blur into circus acts and climax with a great and terrible fall. Neuroses crafted conversations brew and filter down, half escaping my lips. I practice for performances no grander than a trip to the coffee shop. Here, without reason to sink deeper, I make love to those I’ve never tasted and remind myself to put milk on the grocery list. Here, I imagine lives for the shadows that migrate across my walls and trace the outline of my body to make sure I’m all there. Without reason to sink deeper and find sleep, I am a woman who looks up at the moon and plans to steal its luminosity; just a dreamer with dark eyes open, waiting for a message from the stars, waiting for a turn in complacency. These echoes and fractions of words leave me insatiable, so I fill the space, the ancient memory of your face and call this conversation.

I wish Camus had taken the train that day

I saw them on the verge of the precipice, it is funny they mentioned Kierkegaard in that respect.

They go on now, to what I wonder? The world is a giant place and though their words are beautiful, I wonder if they will be drowned out by the noise. I hope not, for me, for them, for all that hope to achieve something.

Yet I aknowledge that some people fail, merit, talent, effort, these things cannot guartantee much except that life will be an action based on attempt. I gladly recognize that uncertainty is the one thing that connects all our subjective experiences and yet I see in recent days that it is necissary to find things that hold that uncertainty at bay. Not escapisms, just little boosts that give us the strength to attempt in the belief that it is the only thing we need and not just merely the only thing we can do.

A little sad, but I have hope, since it is all i can have right now. their words and beauty have given it to me.

The things we think in homesickness.

train kept a rollin, all semester long. And now a cliff is approaching. A waterfall, with rapids following suit. But its alright, Im safe in my duckboat, and mine can go in reverse. But I wont let it.
So little river left before a familiar plunge, my pockets arent water proof, but as long as I keep the pockets even after their soaked, my shirt should remain as pristine white as I'd like it.
But we'll just have to see if the fish and mermaids will let me keep my pockets. I'll fight em all off with a knife if I have to, I wont be going with that flow any longer.

Seasons

sun shines through clouds made of silver linings. the wind walks through my hair and gives me goose bumps all over from the chill.
I constantly wonder, wandering, if it is pushing me forward or pulling me back. If I should or shouldn't go south to see family and friends, if its cold fingertips are what I need.
I'm tired of the rain and the clouds and the sun and snow and ice and wind pulling me pushing me, spinning out of control. The currents of leaves falling turning rapidly into snow then rain then rays of light.
Away I go into the breeze. Arms outstretched and let it catch me to fall where I finally belong.

We are more than machines

Some who rely purely on reason would claim that our minds, our personality, and our very existence is little more than a biological machine filled with complexities but still inherently cause and effect mechanical.

Not so claims one philosopher. I read his words and I think I understand what he is saying. Were we to make a machine that could translate data at the same way we could, it still would not be human. Even if we give it all the cause and effect that we own within our minds, the machine will still never know metaphor, symbolism and association. It might be able to put a few letters together and associate it with "fire" or "car" but it wouldn't know the meaning we give those things.

F-I-R-E= that ember that has been entered in my databanks

F-I-R-E= heat, light, burns, passion, danger, that time I went camping and we stayed up all night keeping our campfire going.

which one is more human?

seems obvious when you think about it, though I known the debate is far more complex than this. still, i sometimes feel its the closest thing to having vindication of the idea of a soul.

The Visit

There are no pictures to prove it, and I doubt anyone would attest to the fact, but it still seems worth saying, I was there. Some kind of pride, straightening of back, as if I am better for it, stronger or smarter, just a bit sexier, I was there. And what does the tightening of the neck mean, the tensing of the muscles, when I can still reach past my toes, but with a greater sigh, a slower grace. When Tuesday looks like Wednesday, feels like Thursday and my inner ear breaks down with a low hum replacing all other sound. When the electrical storm of an orgasm seems strong enough to be magic, and I’m unsure of how to use it, but I’ve got a few ideas.

Crippled in the dark, a sigh, roll over and wonder if you know, I was there.

seperation food

here under the most dulcet
sweeps the ash from the front
porch swings and sunlight and
fields flattened, gray snow, gray
world condensed into globe,
an epiphany on conventional
wisdom, Virgil's presence in
Inferno made into piano notes,
settles like dust on the ocean's
bed linens strewn across the
room, in the space beneath the
stairs collapse beneath the feet
of brief glimpses of life through a
veil misinterpretation ripped
from the moment he woke
up into the deepest space in sea
where she lost her innocence
under the comet scarred sky
we saw the cautious shreds emerge
and ruined all the little things in
life.

Will You Visit?

She saw a ghost, she tells me, a gray form which moved across my room, while she watched so plainly, so clearly. After, she turned all the lights on in the apartment and kept them on until morning. She asked when I’d come home, I didn’t think much of it. She has said these things before; we have a bathroom light switch that decides when it wants to shine, our hand towels are always on the floor, balls of yarn make trips across the apartment. So I didn’t think much of it, or of how scared she was until I came back and went to pull a sisterly prank, sneaking up on her with one of my masks. (This activity is common, a push and pull of sisterhood, who can terrorize who more.) Instead of the playful leap, the yell of surprise, followed by swears and attack, she screamed in terror, jumping away, and my heart fell deep down in. She was so scared. There was no play, and I realized how shaken up she really was from being here alone and seeing what she thinks she saw.

Come May, I’ll live here alone and while I am use to solitude, work fairly well, very productively in solitude, I rather conversation, I rather someone to share wine with, someone to make food with, to wind down with. I’ve never had many friends and that has never particularly bothered me. I became accustomed to giving all my trust and energy to few and specific people, early in life. Girls were always backstabbers, they’d gossip and make fun of you to other girls and they’d ruin your friendship for a boy and suffer no guilt for it. And boys, they were heartbreakers, friends and never boyfriends. I always strived for their love and they took advantage of that for years.

I remember his mouth behind my ear, and I was reading in bed next to him. His hands fumbled across me and I could feel him growing against me. I told him I wasn’t feeling it, I didn’t want it. He didn’t stop. His hands pushed clothing aside, I struggled against him and repeated. He didn’t stop. Then, violently he moved inside me, holding me to him with hand on my chin and waist. I squeezed my eyes shut, I bit my lips, I cried out, and all it did was hurt. It just hurt. After, he told me that it was my fault and that I shouldn’t have turned him on so much if I didn’t want it. I remember crying on the stairs, waiting for my mum to come pick me up. It was the first time I was ever in love. The first man who said he loved me.

How well removed, how safe and happy I am in this place I call my little home. I have my family and those I would lovingly allow into my family. And that has been the most rewarding part, adding new family members as I’ve aged, people with who I do not share blood but would freely give it. They can not fill this space with me, but they are here, they are thoughtful messages, packages in the mail, holiday dinners. And to see them, to be with them, causes me to come alive beside them.

More and more we separate, with distances and significant others, jobs and debts, tired bones and aching egos, we can’t make it to visit, we don’t try to connect. We settle in the thought that they are there, down some road, across some space, they sit and if we needed them, they would be there. We’d know they’d come. But I’d rather share of cup of coffee and a smile. I rather know faces and see the people who have the ability to make my body hum. Sitting, well removed and safe, in this place I call my little home. Come May, I’ll live here alone.
Will anyone visit?
Will he listen if I say no?
Will I sleep with all the lights on?

Too long for a text message

Speak for me once more. Let the words trace down my neck and smiles etch on our faces. The good old days he says. The days before I abandoned you and hoped you would be waiting n the decrepit roller coaster where you took beautiful pictures and searched for a sign. Something more. Get something out of nothing.

I look from a distance and see how much you've grown. Pinks, reds, orange, yellows. Your hair braided into mine.

Remember the feather narrative? I want that feather. I'd cherish it more than you know.

My first true love, make sure Georgia is good to you. I know he will be. Write soon about amusement parks. Lie in the bath and think of candy striped legs and Dr. Stephen. Take pictures so I know you are alright. Take pictures so I know you aren't.

I'm glad you got out, regardless of how. Let's remember the notes and laugh about our antics.

I always think of your lips when I smell photo developer. Some days, it makes me cry

Missing: The Good Old Days

The last time I ate this heavily I dreamed of clocks and blonde holocausts wolves chasing after my father and the circles of time that plague even my waking moments. I could see inside all of out cells and understand why we stop growing when our knowledge of the world gets too big. If i never knew of taxes I'd be ten feet tall by now. My hair down to my knees and sleeping in driveway puddles. The last time I ate nothing for tree days - half out of laziness and half out of the desire for something better to come along - that time I dreamed of prisms in our foreheads, spectrums of light (until now unseen) reaching through the space between us through the dark and into out skulls glowing warm and green with lust. I dreamed of our parents, somehow connected though unaware of one another. Looking twice as they pass on the highway, in the grocery store. Pangs of kinship rattling through them. Gurgling up in their stomachs like seltzerwater bubbles.

for a friend

every year I've known you this shit has happened to you which you dont deserve.
I dont know what it is about the people we surround ourselves with that makes a person disrespect and dishonor and embarras and take advantage of us, but it sucks, and you my friend deserve better.
I had faith in you 2, in her, Ive never seen you so happy, and what does she do? God if I know, Ive not been around to witness potential decline, Ive not been there to see any problems or conflicts, so I guess that makes me the ignorant one, but from what Ive read already, it sounds like she is at fault, and you left for dead.
Im sorry I cant be there for you, but maybe someone else who reads this will take care of you like in the old days. times have changed and so have we, but please, lets go back to the joy and bliss of our first semester. the best for all of us, before the hills and slopes of maturity crawled upon us.
Please be alright, who am I supposed to live with next if not you?
If nothing else will help, live does move on. We know that better than we thought we would, and
I belive it can make us better.