Things Are Heavier When Damp

There is a movement, a shifting of days and a collapsing of hours. The trees’ branches pull the sap back to the core and leaves lacking nutrients turn rusty red and fall to the ground. Their decomposition lets off a sweet smell, the soil moist beneath our feet.

I want to lose something and be indifferent to its loss.

I went on a walk by myself so I could imagine you at my side. Every step felt like a quake and crumbled the structure of my legs, weakened the strength of my mind and I knew they’d find me somewhere, only a pile a rubble.

I wish there were stars to stare up at but it’s been overcast for days. And maybe we don’t pay homage to our birthplace near enough. The little dipper hides out on my right forearm but the rest of my constellations are yet to be mapped. No celebrations, no sacrifices, empty temple bowls, unattended idols. A pile of rubble.

I went for a walk and it was cold.

skip it, please

twirling and spinning alongside so many other people.  we are our own audience.  eveyone swirling and turning around together make nothing.  but memories are the only connection many of us have left.  I dont know my friends from high school anymore, and they dont know me.  But I remember them vividly.  I know that I had conversations with her, but I dont remember what we actually talked about ever, or what the conversations sounded like.  I know the people I live with now, but I have no clue as to what will happen when the next few months roll by.  I may end up hating some of the people I know now.  I may have new friends with which I'll run these same cycles with.  And whats worse, I know Im not the only one

Every person in this building, this campus, this town, this state country continent planet has these same exact memories, these same EXACT stories.  Same shit different day like.  In all this chaos its no wonder people go crazy.  Its no wonder we do art. Not just artists mind you, but all of us, doing art.  We try to be unique.  We try to positively stand out.  if we cant do that, we want to give off the impression we're TRYING to keep a low profile.  We try to look mysterious, not out of place, not reclusive, not alone.  We want so much to be epic and grand that we delude ourselves into thinking we ARE unique.  Even now, writing this, Im not unique.  Thousands of people write as i write.  They too are just sitting in bed on a mac, slapping away at a fly that wont quit, festering in self absorption.  And the fact that I have figured that out? not unique at all.  Im no smarter for figuring it out than any other person.  Hell, there isnt even THAT much to figure out.  We all share these thoughts, and we all feel the need to broadcast it.  Even me, who could say "nonono, im doing this only for me, this blog entry is for my benefit alone" is full of shit.  This post is for anyone whos had the patience to read on and on and on this far.  But I doubt any of you have. I would have given up a long time ago I admit.  I would if I were you, have given up at the paragraph break and skipped down to the last line.  Because admittedly, this stuff really isnt worth reading and i hold no grudges to anyone who doesnt care to read it all.  

so I suppose I've lost my steam at this point, maybe.  We all have work to do, so that means me as well.  I guess I'll keep writing this stuff tomorrow mayhaps.

the origin and elucidation of a microcosm, and how the two souls twirled together caught as one, you'd wonder that they weren't the same person after-

-all, and so the two minds as one could offer only empty platitudes, apoloplies about injuctice:

o, how this countenance becomes you and i.

sept 27

She was shaking, rolling back and forth with an upset look on her face. I couldnt wake her up but I knew what was going on. Finally she awoke but refused to tell me about the dream. I soon got her talking of a tale involving her sister, brainwashing and brazil. Her rolling back and forth was her looking between the evil headmistress and her sister being ritualized towards an unknown fate.

so Im writing this uquick and alone, because Im waiting for my "friends" to show up for breakfast.  I dont know sometimes shy I call them friends, maybe it was because I DID once have good friends in the group, ut they all have abandoned the cause.  Now we're just 2 dichotomies that are still hanging out.  ANd I write this quick because I dont want any of them to see what I ahve to say.  does that mean I care?  

I truly miss previous years here.  The frollicking and the not caring about what people care about you.  But the past year and half has been differnt.  Evertying is personal, even the small things until the pressure builds and releases violently.  I cant let the pressure build, and neither can you.

We only have so long left before the cycle will start again in adulthood and I'm eager to wait.

Life wont be as simple as waking up, attending a lecture, then playing computer games.  

I'll have to worry about rent, bills, taxes, and keeping ANY money that I make.  I'll have to worry about the pressure of staying in tune with work, friends, stress and family.

Eager to wait.

Theyre coming, 

I gtg

of deserts and strawberries

so they bought these strawberries at a roadside stand because they wanted to taste the earth around them. they kept the strawberries, a little overripe and soft, in a plastic bag in the back of the car as they drove through the desert. joshua trees, sun, white-burned rocks, roads with crackles and peeling paint. they ate the berries in the sun and the juice dripped at their feet sort of like blood but mostly like love. they wanted to stay in the desert but arrived in vegas anyway and by that time, the strawberries had gone bad and they left them rotten and brown on the hotel sink the next morning.

Half the Story

A new season, new thoughts, new feelings greeting one when they walk out the door and breathe in deep, the air that chills in the morning and chills more at night. And walking once the sun is down I still look wearily at the edge of the woods, and feel my heart within my chest. I’ve always been afraid of the dark, but more afraid of the monsters created in my mind that lurk in it. I recognize the burning in the fear, the speed of the heart, the quickening of the breath. I know the tensing of my muscles is similar… I can’t help but notice. Wet lips, widen eyes, run away and then laugh deep from your belly.

Take off your clothes and crawl into bed beneath an open window, watching the wind move the treetops from a second story perch. Last night a chill sunk deep down into my body, until I quaked and squeezed my eyes shut, trying to protect my tongue from my teeth and praying for it to end. There was no rationalizing with muscles as they shook, breath and sense would not have them. Then as suddenly as it struck, it ended.

tease

it was the hipsy curve
of the [type of window] that
attracted her or that voice across mouth
from behind her navel the stomach
pit the city is awash and
someone mentioned mardi gras/s/
she tries to remember how many
steps down to the lobby because
its three digits and the combination
for the lock box with the pistol
in it across the way two
lovers fold into each other like
/night/ and underneath the box
is a child and his cheeks
are frosty...

scattered dream of sept 22

Im a ninja

I've entered an old house filled with guards and civilians.  Its night time.

I stalk from room to room, slowly and quickly taking out every person in my path.  For no reason.

I leap out a 3rd story window, someone has heard me, I need to get out.

I sprint down the yard behind some discarded furniture or something and observe the house.

My roomie, Mr Antico, walks out the door to see whats all the ruckus.  He's holding a Nerf gun.

He knows its me.

My sword is now a nerf sword.

I begin to stalk him in the yard,

Im right behind him ready to pounce,

I wake up.

Sap from the trees

I miss you when you are away, like a small ache, like a cureless pain. I try to relieve it with activities, with other people. I try distraction and intrigue, I act badly, I push myself further with muscles tense and body yearning. It is a poor replacement. I feel selfish and foolish, lucky and loved. I sway through the days, stroking the present, planning the future, pushing through and imagining a child up on your shoulders, as we walk through the orchard; you lift them higher to reach the brightest apple on the tree and I smile, holding our bounty in my rounded arms.

from the past: a puerto rico post

"There are two days left,
and lets be honest, you
can't see the stars through
the clouds; they occupy
as an engulfing monstrosity
like the gutwrench and the
bilious slurs. We should con-
sider the implications of
a Puerto Rico -- what
if we consider the idea
of paradise in the mountain
valleys or as a salt water
pool islandbound welling up
from brackish rivers that
trickle beneath the surface
of things: deserts of congestion
indigestion and alimony. But
its good to have friends
and its good to know balance.
Its good to teeter on edges
and send yourself careening
over a valley a hundred
feet below screaming your
head off because at the bottom
you're safe and in the
end you have a home
to return to.

The idea of mermaids.

I have read that
the atlantic ocean
is particularly cold,
that the warmest currents
veer southward and
that if you close your
eyes and inhale under
water than you'll wake
up sunbleached in Puerto
Rico. Who has the
first and last word?"

Puerto Rico 6/06/09

I just gottta survive the day. one cay.

full of survivers adreneline. Can hardly stand still , its like 12 cups of coffee and three monsters inside me. Almost died today. almost joined some friends. No idea things would get soo intense in less than one day. only consolation was interupted by the horde once again..

I just got word that its not just paranoia. Everyone really IS out to get me.

I'd like to document as a social and self experiment how the days will roll by. Shoot nerf and film during the day's travels. Keep a journal. like this one. but maybe leave it somewhere for someone else to find one day after the turmoil has passed. If you dont hear back from me, its because I've lost my voice. Its rotted away.

Wish me luck,

Jarpoer

SAlert:
everyone I know is dead. Bravo is Zero plus one, Alpha will soon be maybe 2 of infinity. I need to go to class, but how can I when the ONLY peopl;e I share classes with who are also playing are dead and rotting!?!
I cant stand being alone. We are soon gonna be 10 of 25 still human. If this is how the world ends nerf style, Im gonna hate if it happens for real.
Consider this my last contact on this regard. The internet is infected now too, and I wont like being tracked like an animal.
A wolf in overdrive goes mad.
Yours till my dying day,
Harper

at least 1:35 in the morning

crying loreal, return from walkings and bitches being bitches.  Creepy and annoying and stupid lady  just being a bitch.  CAnt stand it anymore, surprised Im writing this down, for all to see.  moving on please!!!!

scared but goodnights are long overdue and life can get happier.  Please everyone sleep!  no more BFF talk, no more fiction, no more gossip.  Cant we ALL just get along?!  No more no more no more no more.d  just in case this is the end of the post, Im sorry for the immaturity.  And im sorry for the louzy repetative language.  Im not that articulate.  obviously.

noes goes.  

SO GO

GOGOGOGOGO you crazy crazy person!

how do I tolerate everyone here when I cant stand being with them 80 percent of the time!?

Screen just got far better, sicknesses are leaving the body in phlegm form.  This cant be a bad sign.. I'll just be pretend the past few paragraphs arent real.  Join me. its 1:40

repeated dream

Im 5

We start a race, me and the infamous we.

We start with a sprint down a cement track with a grand water fall to our left.  The water is hitting the cement with no splash or break in texture; so the cement is liquid, which makes it much harder to run.

We take a right around a wall and into a flooded garbage dump.  I grab a discarded water floaty to ease my passing through the dump, but a fellow competitor pops it so I have to wade the rest of my way through this stretch.

We take another right up a hill leading from the garbage dump to a ramshackle old house.  Its not part of the race but we all go through it.  Inside are classic movie monsters.  Frankenstein wolfman dracula the mummy etc.  I get scared and run into a small closet bathroom.  I hide under the sink and the wolfman comes in to look for me.  He looks straight at me and leaves.  I make a run for it.  Out the house I go, I take another right on the track into a fairground of JUST ferris wheels, mostly yellow.  I hope into a basket and enjoy the ride for a bit.  

Now if you've been keeping track, thats 3 rights I've taken.  The last leg of this race is me reaching the end of the fair grounds and finding a cliff that over looks the water fall from the start of the race.  I jump off the cliff and land in the liquid cement.  The starting line IS the finish line.

I wasnt first place, but they gave me the gold medal anyway.

In other versions of this dream, I skip the house altogether because I know now whats in it.  Sometimes the garbage dump isnt flooded or I find I dont need the floaty to make my way through.  Sometimes I bypass the ferris wheels altogether and earn the gold.

I havent had the dream in years, I feel a bit overdue...

apoesis

i wonder if one can be as easily defined as dna,
gttgcaca

and i wonder if there's a poem there. i once looked
into dna as a means of escape and a means of illustrating
narrative, because the most concrete of our notions
is the one there, in our genes, encoded by blood
and sperm; gametes, you know, the sex(y) cells.

look, let's talk it out here, these last few years.
it,life,youknow, was never just a matter of fluid exchange.

the europeans came. they burned down the village and gave me a blanket.

it was sort of like that.
a little more romantic.
a little less breathless.
they call it ethics.
the poetics of ethos/pathos

dream of sept 14

We're running.  Its like a game, HVZ or manhunt, or maybe you just want to hit me with a nerf sword again.  Whatever the reason, we're running.

Its an enormous filled parking lot at night time.

We've both got that dream-induced super speed so we sprint and jump so far beyond what real physics would generally allow.  I've never run so fast, and you were there, right at my heels. 

We're both laughing hysterically as I try to lose you vaulting over parked camper trailers, dodging and weaving between mini vans and pickup trucks. 

Back and forth we go, over and over and over again, I cant gain any distance over you, you're always nipping at my heels ready to tag me out of the game.  Ready to win.

I zig,

I zag,

I slip and as I try to recover you tag me on the shoulder.

youve won. 

And we start to walk back to where the dream began, smiling and panting.

its just been reduced to a playlist

15 days and counting.  5000 different ideas just floating around as the endless ones and zeroes theyve been reduced to.  the rock here, the rap there, the screaming and the beating coming soon.  

my head is shaking with the speed of these disorganized plans.  these thoughtful messages from some of the worlds most creative minds.

Im honestly surprised when my ears dont bleed from the constant ongoing persuasion of these hundreds of other artists.  Every day these people communicate with us, and most are never listened too by their audience.  Hundreds of years have gone by with these people, these rhythmic animals, trying to get us to listen beyond just hearing.  

Our culture today is all noise.

Thats all we want now, is just something in the background, something we can just ignore when we feel like it.  The walls pound with the sounds of electronic stimulation, the "artists" of distractions, the creators of sloth.  

Im tumbling right now, listening to the moans and groans of whats-their-face as they sing and clap to whatever was griping them that day, at that place.  You know the place I mean.  You were there that time werent you?

New song, quiet. Now I can hear my typing, the murmers and groans around me.  And Im in my own private shell.  An invisible pulsating shell of shaking rhythms and beats.

a victim of this shell.  sometimes the claustrophobia is just what we need.  

I heard somewhere that every animal on this earth dies alone.  

does that mean we trap ourselves into this shell to await a sooner death?  To be alone all the time so we're prepared for the final song? Our last dance?

My fingers feel twitchy.  are my ears bleeding yet? Do yours want to?

a day in august

they've got that just-from-the-beach glow, even though it's been a cold day in august.

too much time

not a day goes by when I dont think back to the things that went down.
Every day I see you is another reminder of how I failed you as a friend.
You may think nothing of me any more, or you may still be waiting for an apology. I dont know.
I'd rather assume you think nothing of me anymore, because having something pending like that is only going to intensify the anxiety and discomfort I already feel about us.
Life has moved on to the fullest, and I couldnt be happier with the small group of people around me with whom I truly care about now. It was just a chapter after all. A heavy influence over a good chunk of my, and your, life.

I think I want to dedicate part of my senior project to the John H Whitaker Place assisted living home. If not for that building, I wouldnt be the person i am today. We wouldnt have really met. We wouldnt have found Chester. Who would I be?
Maybe a computer programing major.
Or a receptionist at a nature preserve.
Certainly not an Art major, at least not a proclaimed one.
The friends I have now would never be.
the travels I've adventured would never have past.
These lessons of life and love would not apply to me.
So all in all,
Thank you.

While we were just a chapter, it was (up to date) the most important chapter of my life.
And really, though I was a complete pile of douche ;) I dont regret anything anymore. And I'm glad we're both happy. If you ever read this, or if we ever talk again, I'm sorry. The only thing I dont want is for us to look back and cringe. I dont want your last thought of me to be that of regret or disapointment. And lately I feel that we've succeeded in ensuring peace between us.
It took long enough, but finally, I've moved on.

Better Than Ashes

I had a dream last night that butterflies started to stream into the room and land in my hair. They covered my head and shoulders, all shapes, colors and sizes, and began to mate.

“Stay still,” others informed me, “be careful and let them do what they are doing.”

And I could barely feel their flutter against my forehead, on my neck. Some couples landed on my forearms, tiny and connected they made their butterfly love and I watched, and I sat still and let them.

I don't think science can explain...

Atoms form molecules form DNA form cells form tissue that we call skin.
And by some divine design there are nerves thrown into the fray.
Why is it, then, when two different skins rub together, as atoms and molecules do,
our nerves react, sending electrical and chemical impulses to the
lump of tissue we call a brain?
Well, the true question here is, why do we like it?
Aside from our mental conditioning
Aside from what chemical messages are sent from brain to
limb, limb to brain.
Why. Do. We. Like. It.
More importantly.
Why do we allow ourselves to get
"in trouble"
because of it?

---

Why is touch good?
Why is some touch better than others?
(Even the same kind of touch, but different people.)
There are more important questions that stem from
"What is the meaning of life?"
But how often do we get
"caught up"
in those?

Dream Bed

I sleep on a bed made of white cotton clouds, above me stars made of plastic and paint. I'm enveloped in the darkest of satins, the brightest of silks. My mind wanders slowly through each as my body tosses and turns to find a comfortable hole to fall down and escape the pressures of gravity and reality. Somewhere down the tunnel my body curls, resting between molecules of air and smoke, hoping they are from you slowly exhaling next to me.

matches preliminary

what business
a boy like me has writing
about city streets and projects
when in my blood runs concrete
side walks and manicured lawns
I don't personally
know any bums with claw hands
and donutcups filled silver and
I haven't seen the roaches in the
flour and the sugar and the fridge
all the cupboards -- they're even
in the toilet, goddamn pests --
but my mom(ther) wasn't so lucky
and she sits me down still
sometimes and tells me stories
of the projects: how she
watched a boy coming running
down the hill in flames, and her
grandmother push him to the
ground and with her palms
and her forearms pounded him out
and that was how i learned not
to play with matches she says
and that's how I learned too

one spill later.

Let's talk about bicycles. Let's talk about how legs pump and, in the motion and the speed, and in the distance you cover with your head down, bugs thumping up your nostrils, you can start to taste a little something in the back of your throat that is a memory, and also a desire, and mostly regret because regret is what becomes phlegm.

I remember you in the spokes. the light coming through between them, i mean. like through the cracvks in the boards of the house where i grew up. i remember peeking through and seeing into the room below, and it runed out it wasn't a room in m yhouse at all; it was adifferent place, and I think maybe Norse, perhaps egyptian. I've never been to egypt but I hear its a little dustyhot. I hear that people think about you in ways you couldn't otherwise imagine. or perhaps you could imagine, with a little oomph; a little whiskey shot. maybe hemingway knew what it was all about.

perhaps the way to understand is to start at the end and work your way backwards and around. i once found a maze and discovered its depths, plumbed it out. it had a name, like a woman, but i've forgotten it now.

These words all have cobwebs, and I apologize if the dust gets up in your lungs. I haven't been here in ages. I've sort of forgotten how things looked. I should have tidied up before setting the padlock. I should have left a little note for you on the door.

forget august

she says it's too cold for july, but he says it's almost september. there's this hole in time, she says, she just wants to forget august even happened. he says you can't erase time and she says, watch me.

three sorts prelude

three sorts of madness
i know of - repetition
delusion and ... oh, forgetfulness
three is the charming number
and for the magic, three is the way

see the old man standing
near the stairs case
the fellow on the train
off to work - he's forgotten
sundays and sabbaths
the girl te boy
this dark street

oxidation prefab

tell me truthful that
you don't wonder what
goes on behind these
monolith tenements,
these "moloch eyes"
(ginsy nuzzles in my
ear) and all i can
relate is the time
i watched a man dig
through the refuse bin
extracting tiny bits
of gold and consumed
with fear of robots
around him as are
we all, and i tell you
truthful that i watched
the mechanical locusts
descend on him, swarm
swell and that
all I saw left behind
was a hat. but what
kind of narrator am I?
ask the corner stones, they
know more secrets
they remember bodiced women
and crates and shanghaied
the prettiest of the boys
for the clubs over east side
i could tell you these numbers
mean lost in time but its
all the same - see how
sepia'd we've all become?