body language

you lean forward and away.  i try to convince myself that it's not me.  who wants to think they are the one to make another pull away?  i'm giving you lots of room, why don't you just lean back?  you lean forward intently as if having some deep conversation with the road in front of you, reflections of the double yellow lines and the white passing lane steady streams a message.  are you arguing?  are you trying to understand why it is you are here traversing this road again?  you are perfectly still like a model and i'm attempting to draw you.  is your back sore?  must you sit that way because of developing kidney stones?  why do you watch the road so?  are you afraid of going off course?  are you hoping to?  are you simply drawn to the light like we all are, even if the light is artificial?  you seem troubled.  you remove your hands from under your chin to cradle your cheeks.  what is the road telling you my beautifully still muse?  you gentle creature, you deep brooding thing.  perhaps you are not here at all, space cowboy, perhaps you are beyond the road, outside of this particular journey.  you're in a star somewhere else.  you are posed as a melancholy thinker.  i've nailed it, yes?  but i've got you all wrong haven't i?  all wrong, like an artist who just can't seem to draw hands.  except this is more debilitating.  hands you can hide behind the figure's back, or under a desk or in a hug.  but a mind?  where can you hide a mind?

2011 in a Blogshell

not every day has been accounted for in writing, but most have.  i've looked over the morning pages to try to remember what really made up each month.  so much happens in a day, in a month and of course, in a year.  here's a short list for me to remember and for anyone else who is interested in where i've been and what i've been doing.

January: Still employed at Sun and Sea and Hairy Monkey Books.  I'm extremely bored most days and know that I need to work on finding a different job.  I try to supplement my part time work with some part-time tutoring.  This falls through.  I even interview at my old elementary school to see about becoming a substitute teacher.  This also falls through.  I continue the Artist's Way which I pursue like a religion.  I draw wheels of balance to see if my day to day living is healthy and full.  I find one area lacking in particular: my social life.  I attempt to be-friend a girl at work, but it doesn't really go anywhere.  I throw myself into my writing especially on the novella, The Letters.  I do meet interesting characters at work inspiring pieces for my blog.  I begin to look into MFA programs. 

February: Roseanne Barr visits Hairy Monkey Books.  I stand in the longest lines I've seen at the mall to fill out an application to work at Safeway.  The doors close before I ever get to fill out an application.  I waited for 4 and 5 hours respectively.  I get a second interview for a dental technician position.  I go to Ross and buy fancy shoes and dress slacks.  I put on make-up for the first time in years.  I do not get the position.  I entertain thoughts of becoming a professor.  More research into graduate school.  Superbowl sunday with my grandfather.  I have to work so I miss the first half.  But i make it home for the second half.  The Steelers lose :(  I'm fired for the first time in my life from Sun and Sea and Hairy Monkey Books.  I have poor customer service apparently.  I'm silently overjoyed to be out of there.  I become obsessed with Chelsea Handler and watch as many of her clips on youtube as possible.  I also buy her book.  It is hilarious.  Watched some roller derby.  More writing.

March:  Pounding the pavement looking for a job.  Jobs are scarce.  I start my newest writing project: a love story about a hopeless romantic.  The project is more or less fictional.  Looking for jobs is miserable.  So many applications.  Life feels mundane.  Then in the middle of March, a break from Home Depot working as a sales associate in the building and lumber department.  Still working on The Letters

April:  Have to get used to the guys I work with in Building and Lumber.  They don't take quickly too me.  Plus I must learn all the products and their proper uses.  However, I make friends soon after hire and pick up the product information fairly quickly.  It is hard work and I do lots of running around in the store.  Loading 10 or more bags of cement for a single customer begins to strain my back and at the end of the day I'm fairly tired.  However, I get recognized by customers who write positively about me in their comments surveys.  Rains steady for 2 weeks, but feels more like 3 months.  I get a call from PTA.  I interview and am offered the crew leader position for the invasive plants program.  The pay increase is great and I will be able to work outside.  I take the position instantly.  My last day at Home Depot is the 28th.  Still writing.

May:  Start work at PTA.  At first it is good as I'm taken under the existing crew leader's wing.  She leaves in the middle of the month and I'm stuck with my new co-leader.  We do not get along at all.  It is a rough transition with some personalities that are difficult and even down right mean.  I do my best, but I feel close to awful most days when I get home.  It has never been this difficult for me to make friends.  I wonder if I made the right decision.  I register to take the GRE.  Continue work on the relationship novella (still without a title) and it's really starting to take shape.  I begin my character study on a particular person and compose several short pieces.  My attempt to write as I discover, to dictate the layers of the individual.  This will be a reoccurring theme. 

June:  Working conditions not getting any better but I'm getting smarter.  Learned my endangered natives and figuring out the system within the organization.  I wish to be with a different department as I do not seem to bond with those within my department.  Don't know who to trust and debating who I should go to with my myriad of issues.  My story is really coming into its own.  Applied to Vermont Studio Art Center residency.  Start writing on the commute to work.  Trying too hard to befriend a strange and stand-offish creature.  Really productive writing month.

July:  Camping trip for work.  While out in the field that week, we get along well.  I have high hopes for our return.  Upon return things resort back to normal.  I'm not too happy.  Made crew work out in rain even when they didn't want to.  It was important.  We finished our task.  I made a decision and stuck with it.  Another very productive and fruitful writing month. 

August:  Things getting slightly better at work.  Getting a system, understanding some folks a little better.  Take my mother to an America concert for her early birthday.  It was one of the highlights of my year, especially our dinner watching the sunset.  That was pretty awesome :)  Accepted to Vermont Studio Art Center with partial grant.  However, without a full grant, I knew I couldn't jeopardize my job so I decline the offer.  Contemplate getting Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese" tattooed on me.  I become ever more frustrated with a certain acquaintance. 

September:  My friend Stephanie comes to visit and gives me a much needed break from all the hostility at work.  It's nice to have a friend my age around.  We do all sorts of things around the island and go to Maui to watch my Aunt's halau compete.  Stephanie even makes biscuits that are hot, just out of the oven when I get home.  awe...  I take the GRE.  ugh...

October: Back to the grind and this will be my last month of employment with PTA because I was on a temporary contract.  I hope I get hired back but I don't want to assume anything.  I remain in good graces and finish out my time.  My last day is the 21st.  I pick up The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.  Totally changes my perspective.

November:  I join a gym so I don't go crazy during my time off.  I get really into bike riding and happy for the workout, the vistas and some quality time alone.  I try to work on my writing but I do more bike riding than anything else.  I contemplate a trip to the mainland, but I don't want to miss a possible interview or anything.  I even contemplate a short stint at SCA but even the shortest stint would require more time than I have.  I get the interview and get the job with a slight raise.  I start again on the 28th.  I stop taking my journal to work and use a small notebook instead, one I can fit in my pocket.  Much better.  Much safer.  GRE scores are okay, ready to apply to schools.  But not... 

December:  Don't apply to MFA programs, unsure if now is the time.  Back at work.  Things looking good with certain troubled colleagues but then things turn a bit sour again.  Christmas holiday.  Went to company Christmas party.  Interesting experience.  Went to parents for Christmas holiday.  I made it through.  I love my mother and thank her for helping me through.  Buy a fishing charter trip for my folks and I as a Christmas gift.  We sail in January.  Still writing.  Saw the bardo realm for what it was.  Nearly missing the van twice and had to run for it.  Submitted a section of the story without a title.  Called it Something Like Entropy.  Have high hopes and am crossing my fingers.  A quiet New Years.

slight sight

standing under a koa tree with stars above, i saw that we are destined for more.  beyond.  the bardo was revealed to me.  the tree was real but not.  it was a cut out made of paper.  odd, tree makes paper and paper makes tree.  i got the sense that i was being pulled up to the stars.  it was as if i was existing in the present at the same time that i was existing in a memory.  i was living in a memory.  i saw the transitory nature of waiting on the side of the road for a van to take me.  i was standing in a memory, a waking for a moment from the present dream, the dream life or the life life.  i'm still uncertain which.  i was breathing in a memory as if present was already past and i had some kind of far reaching, far sighted perspective. 12/27/2011

some other body

The body talks with a mirror.  Cups of tea standing in for whiskey.  Shameful.  Cheap.  I’m in a hot parlor with some lovelies from down south, way down, way south.  There are snifters from world war II in their hands as they hand down orders from a sour puss debutant.  We can’t be helped.  None of us will make it out of here alive.  We can only hope to be resurrected or some bull shit like that. 

Remember when you ran over the tulips with your bicycle?  You were too old for that thing anyway, boner wagging in your pants.  You wanted me then didn’t you?  Wanted to take me down hard, south, mouth, puss, paw, south paw, sour puss, mouth.  Couldn’t deflower me, cause I could run real fast, had to take it out on the tulips.  I bet your mom was pissed.

I taught you to sway dem hips like I never do at home, but like I promised to do to you, you who laid waiting under a black light lit poster of Janis Joplin.  To the bathroom to take out my contacts.  I’d rather not see what I’m doing.  Meanwhile you picked celery strands from your teeth, say you’re going to eat me alive.  I locked myself in your closet.  I didn’t want to die.

happy face

i want to write something happy for a change.  i close my eyes and watch the pasture come into frame, growing up in image just as its very contents grow up toward a blue sky.  clouds, white, ethereal things and a small white dog, fluffy and excited, blots out the frame with his exuberant close ups.  i'm smiling behind the camera.

freedom breedom

today i wait, and pretend and look as if i am busy, look as if i am catching the deepest pulse of things, as if i am somehow saturated in the integrity of this place.  but let's be honest, i'm only moving for the dollar, for the dollar so i can keep moving.  was it in my power to escape the rat race?  is it in my power still?  from a place of comfort and employment i venture to the ledge and wonder what it would feel like to jump off, to end in free fall, to feel free and know that any moment i would be obliterated, shattered into a billion, billion tiny molecules collapsed and taken back to the bitty bits from whence i cam.  and yes, can't we be obliterated here, on this ledge?  on this solid ground?  caught up in a landslide, broadsided by a car or my personal favorite, combustion from within, a heart attack, lung failure, a sudden giving up without the intending to give up?  of course i'm afraid to jump.  i watch those beautiful bodies of friends i know flying through the air and wishing to be one but not and cannot.  cannot?  will not.  will not?  will, yes, but not.  confusing isn't it?

the pick up point

limbs in the dark are enlightening
the side of the road is waiting
for something
for a ride
for a place to be whisked away
travel mug is squirming
in my arms like a baby.

11/23/2011

dream heavy in the nights when you're alone
are you starving for affection?
are you starving for something you can't keep down?
what is this hostile place?

i'm willing to go as deep as i must for a sentence. 
take it from my marrow,
willing to give up an appendage...
maybe...
not an appendage,
but willing to bleed out a while,
just for a sentence
you see?

it's been long. 
and long it has been. 
perhaps i'm sleeping too much. 
rain fills the ground
everything is fat from too much penetration. 
you see 
i'm waterproof apparently. 
nothing's getting through to me.

A Little More

His hot little face extremely red and sore, diaphanous sheets of skin blooming from around his eyes and nose and ears like new pedals, lips so red and bleeding they looked like the carved out muscle of a bull while he was still alive and a large gaping mouth, sending out what might be hell incarnate for anyone who had to hear it.  This is the image that comes to me as a poisonous vapor before I sleep and dream and wish I hadn’t done such an awful thing.  How they could show such an image on the news and then re-print it hundreds of times to put on the front page of the local newspaper is a mystery to me.  Such insensitivity.  Such sensationalism.  These reports, these dogs of the press, why not tell us he was severely burned, why not tell us that time will heal the wounds, why not let us imagine in as little or as much detail as we want?  Why make the pain eternal?

His eyes haunt me.  Puffed and swollen things like a baby bird just born.  His eyes haunt me, eyes I had never seen, green, blue, brown, hazel, I’ll never know.  At night, when his tortured face comes to me, I try to imagine him opening his eyes; I try to imagine what they would look like, beautiful things, big and round and crystal blue.  Always blue.  Blue like yours.  I’m sorry.  I’m sorry.  I’m really, really sorry.

*

I was sitting in my mother’s living room, a towel wrapped around my shoulders, my feet bare, and my throat dry. 

“Go on and take a bath or you’ll catch a cold” my mother yelled from in the kitchen.  She was making macaroni and cheese, the kind out of a box.  I ignored her and stared into the TV.  “Breaking News” it said.  The gaunt, young news anchor had a stoic and passionless face.  Her hair was flat and she was cold, I could tell, but back straight and shoulders square she delivered the news.  This was, after all, the biggest story to hit our county since the attempted burglary at Mr. Patterson’s place and the subsequent death of his dog, Peaches, who was shot six times.  The dog was not shown on TV. 

“There has been no new developments as to how the infant is doing at this time.  When he was admitted to the hospital, it was clear that he suffered from third degree burns over his entire face.  The medical staff on hand was especially worried for his eyes” The image of the infant came to the screen burning in a moment that would never end.  “It is too soon yet to comment as to whether or not the child will be rendered blind by this horrific accident”.

“Blind?” I whispered to myself.  My mother was standing behind me with a wooden spoon in her hand.  I looked up at her timidly.   

“What’s got you so frightened huh?” she asked extending the spoon with macaroni for me to try.  I had no appetite whatsoever and told her so, “How could they show such an awful picture?” I asked.

“Yes, it’s a sad story isn’t it?  Sad, sad story” she petted my head, “But don’t worry, the baby will be just fine.  Now, why don’t you go on and take a hot shower.  Sitting around in those wet clothes is going to give you cold”.


It had been raining for days on end.  Literally.  The hours pooled around my soggy toes in waking and drowned my tired ears at night.  In my twenty two years of living I had never seen so much rain at one time.  All the older folks around town seemed rather happy for the rain.  “We’ve been in a drought for the last fifteen years; it’s about time we get some damn rain”.

Of course, it’s not easy to see such an upside to all the rain, especially when you’re young and all you want is to run around in the sunshine, make big plans and gaze out at the clear unimpeded horizon and tell yourself in a low and soulful voice, “there, that’s where it’s at” even when you don’t know what you mean.  Perhaps the young ones need the sun more than the older ones precisely because we don’t know what we mean.  And who could think with all that rain tapping on your head anyway?
“It’s been raining so much my skin smells like mold” I told my mother. 

She only laughed and replied, “A little rain is good for the soil”.  She pulled back one of the kitchen curtains, “See?  Look at those weeds!  Have you ever seen them so spry?”  She laughed again. 

“It didn’t rain this much in Florida” I huffed.

“It’ll be alright, you’ll see”

But it wasn’t alright. The rain didn't stop, even when those older folks who liked the rain turned their backs on it and joined the rest of us in praying that it would stop, the rain thundered on.  It didn’t matter how much I wanted something, the rain made it clear that there was something greater in this world than my wants.  Of course, it wasn’t simply the rain that made me realize this; rather it was my entire situation, the rain of which only made it so theatrically clear.  I was stuck in a small town, not just any ol’ small town, but my hometown, pressed firmly under the paradoxically portly thumb of a repression.  I went away four years ago swearing never to return save for the few family holidays.  I went away and graduated from a fine school with a degree in psychology.  The moment I stepped from the sweet and sheltered threshold of my college life to the “real world” I instantly felt the pain that would be my future existence.  Unemployment and a very ill economy smacked the rose colored glasses right off my raised little nose with such force, I would feel the whip lash for years to come.  Rather than wonder the streets begging for a dime, I not-so-humbly returned home where I put my psychology degree to use heartlessly scrutinizing my co-workers and our customers at the local coffee shop.

“So you come back.  Thought you were going to live in the big city” Stephanie hissed.  I hadn’t been working at the coffee shop more than three days and already the girls were openly ripping me to shreds.  In my town people liked to keep up appearances which meant if they had anything nasty to say to you, they would either shroud it in some clever banter or give it to you in private.  Somehow, such prudence skipped our generation.

“Big city?  I would hardly call it a big city, but I suppose if all you’ve seen is this town, well then I do suppose it’s pretty big” I said snickering.

“So you went away to a fancy school so you could work here?  Seems like a waste of money seeing as I never went away and I work here and will be taking vacation at the end of the year.  You won’t get vacation for a long time” she spat.

“Vacation?  Really?  Gee, where you going to go Stephanie?  Across the bridge to Lockwood?” I asked sarcastically.

“Just seems like you went away to be something and you come back nothing.  Sad, that’s all” she said, bumping past me to gather supplies from the back room.  Unlike most of the student body from my high school, I went to college and moreover, I went out of state.  I knew from the moment I hit high school that I wanted out of this town, I wanted more than its population of two hundred and fifty could offer.  Sure, the annual country fair with its prized chicken contest, the grocery store that acted like a swap meet for all sorts of gossip and the public library the size of an outhouse was in some way quaint if you were passing through, but it was damn depressing if you were young and expected to make a life there. 

I had always thought I was smarter than the average scrubby little kid this town spit out endlessly like watermelon seeds.  I was drinking coffee by the time I was eight and not just because my father died and my mother still always poured two cups in the morning out of habit, but because I was already out growing this place.  I needed the speed and lights and strangeness of a city, hell, of a bigger town even.  I watched my mother grow dimmer each day after my father left.  The town was starving her, and yet, there was just enough stimulation to keep her alive, my sisters, her little garden, the Mrs. Pueschel’s alleged affair with the bag boy at the local grocery.  When I told my mother I wanted to go to college she was thrilled.

“That’s wonderful honey!” she said wiping her wet hands on her jeans and releasing my newly shorn sister from her seat in the kitchen.  My sister always wore her hair short, something about it being neater and cleaner my mother said.  My sister hated her short hair and I could hear her at night sometimes plotting her getaway to a land with the long haired ladies. 

“In Florida” I continued and opened the refrigerator to fetch a piece of cheese.

“Florida?” her voice dropped an octave. 

“Yes, Florida.  The school is really nice and they are giving me a full scholarship”

My sister tugged on my mother’s leg.  “Where’s Florida?” she asked.

“Too damn far away” she replied staring hard at me.  “Now go up and fetch your sister, she could use a trim too”

I began to walk away with my sister, “No, you stay right here.  We’re going to talk about this Florida business”.  I remember sitting at the table watching my mother skillfully measure my youngest sister’s blonde locks and snip, snip, snip.  With each clip of the scissors I felt my dream of Florida being cut out from under me.

“Why don’t you want me to go?”

“Because it’s too far away.  You’ve never been that far away.  What if something happens?”

I shrugged my shoulders.  She was worrying, she was being a drag.

“If you’re all the way down in Florida, how do you expect me to get there and help you when you need it?”

Then I said something that I would regret saying for the rest of my life, something that would keep us from speaking to one another for most of my four years of college.  “You’re just afraid.  You’re afraid I’ll leave you like dad did, leave you and get out of this shit hole town”.  The moment I said it, I wanted to take it back.  I had never sworn in front of my mother and I had never used my father’s name to hurt anyone.

She was shocked.  She put the scissors gently on the table and told my sister to go up to her room.  My sister, though only still so little, could feel the gravity of the situation and she begun to cry.  I listened for her whimpering as she climbed the stairs.  My mother sat in the chair next to mine and looked me levelly in the eye.  She was so calm and then, suddenly, she slapped me hard across the face, so hard I thought she might have broken my jaw.  I cried out in shock.

“Your father died.  He died on his own, it had nothing to do with me or you or your sisters.  Don’t you ever desecrate his memory again just because you want to hurt me.  Go to Florida if that’s what you want to do.  But don’t you ever, ever make the mistake of talking to me like that again.”

I left for Florida in the fall.  Even with months in between our blow up and my departure date, mother’s and my relationship remained strained.  I came home for two Christmases and each time I waved goodbye to the small town on my way back to the airport, I was so thankful to be leaving again.     

I knew the town had a way of ensnaring people, not for any charm or promise of a better life, but because of connivance, because you could just get by and maybe have enough change to play a round or two or pool at the local bar.  Most folks in this town had been here since the town first began.  Streets were named after families and mom and pop stores were still king.  My parents were high school sweethearts.  My dad was a big time football star and my mother was an odd choice, being the nerdy, quiet type.  But somehow it worked and until my father killed himself, our family was the pride of the town.  My father was the manager at the local farm supply store and my mother was a school teacher.  My grandmother was alive then, so we’d spend time with her while my folks were out making a living.  We were an upstanding family, with a clean and well kept yard, always present for church on Sundays.  Of course, things change and it’s usually the smallest of things that make the greatest changes.  A bullet, a word, a shot of cheap vodka. 

*

I daydreamed through my days at the coffee shop and garnered steady and loyal disliking.  I couldn’t blame my classmates; I was slow in my tasks, disinterested in the customers and horribly clumsy.  And moreover, I didn’t care.  I was selfish.  I thought I was so learned but in reality I didn’t know a damned, damned thing. 

"This sucks!" I mumbled under my breath.  Steamed whole milk had already begun to sour on my black slacks.  It was ninety-eight degrees behind the counter and I was trying my best to keep my sweat from dropping into someone’s double spiced cinnamon dulce late.  The line of cups at the bar had begun to snake over to the register counter and greasy pawed children with rotting teeth were begging apathetic teenage mothers to get them their “coco-now”.  It was all very pressing.  Give the people what they want said the manager, he, only forty or so years older than the greasy pawed children but as much an impatient prick.  I searched for a can of whipped cream under the espresso bar only to have my hands come up empty.  Meanwhile the crowd of people was pushing against the counter like a tidal wave threatens to crush a break wall.  Their hungry eyes shouted “we will take our lattes and cocoas and anything else we damn well want!”

"Fricken’ kids and their whipped cream" I huffed under my breath.  I turned on my heel and in the process knocked over a nearly completed cinnamon dulce latte, then the only thing about my night that showed any promise of progress.  The crowd instantly quieted and stared at me in disbelief.  The world had shattered, the momentum slowed, a man in a business suit cried.  I let myself duck into the back work space to retrieve the whipped cream.  I would forget about the mess for the time being.  I would make the drink over again for the young college student who thought talking about Marx at the top of her voice qualified her as intelligent.  I would apologize, compliment her on her all black wardrobe, black trench coat, black leggings, high heeled black leather boots and a black beret and maybe even ask she believed in a revolution, just to stroke her ego a bit.  If she was kind she'd drop a nickel in the tip jar to help the unfortunate.  And I would smile and go on working the rest of the evening in my puddle of souring milk and high fructose corn syrup.

When I returned armed with six cans of whipped cream, you were working on the espresso bar, steaming milk and pulling shots, bright eyes smiling, blond hair pulled up into a bun, a small golden heart hanging on a dainty chain about your neck.  You wore a fitted white t-shirt with a stenciled print of Jim Morrison, skinny jeans and nothing but a pair of Reef slippers on your feet.  The long line of cups, which under my tutelage appeared as drinks lined up for a slaughter, looked in your skilled and dainty hands like precious gifts from heaven.  Some people just have a way of calming their surroundings, like they can slow the agitated particles of the air, mellow the manic beats of the heart, quiet the ranting of the mind, and deliver the soul from trouble. Skillfully and seemingly effortlessly, you had assuaged the great bottle neck that only moments before threatened my very sanity.

"You showed up just in time" Melanie said giving a parting wave to the last customer who made her way to the exit.

"Are you supposed to be here?" said Stacy counting the meager change in the tip jar.

"Nah, I came in with talk with Michael about a schedule change"

"Well thanks for filling in.  Space case screwed up again"

"That was a big rush" you said levelly.

"A big rush?  Yeah right" Stacy said laughing. “Why are you always defending her?”

“Well somebody has to” said Melanie laughing.

You came back to where I had decided to make myself busy washing dishes.

"You alright?"

"Yeah, yeah, just spilt some things and it kinda snow balled on me you know?" I said, trying not to let you see my watering eyes.

"Yeah, I know how that gets".  You put your hand on my shoulder and a wave of tranquility flooded me. "You smell like sour milk".  Your nose scrunched up and you laughed.

"Yeah, my apron's drenched" I felt your hand fly from my shoulder and you were gone.

"Here" you extended a freshly cleaned and starched apron to me.

"That's nice of you, but I don't need it.  It's almost the end of the night and there's no point in getting a fresh apron all dirty"

"Of course there's a point, actually it's exactly the point.  Here take it".  You said pushing the apron to my chest.

"Really, I'll feel bad taking your clean apron.  My shift's almost over"

"You feel like those things that surround you.  If you want to stew in sour milk fine, but personally I think you deserve better than that.  Take the apron" you smiled.

"Thanks"

"Not a problem.  You working tomorrow?"

"Yeah in the afternoon.  You?"

"Got the morning shift. I'll take your apron and wash it for tomorrow and you can use mine.  We'll switch back later.  Sound good?"

"Great"

"Great.  See you tomorrow".  You started to walk away.

"Hey!"  I hollered and you turned around. "Thank you.  You are..." I stumbled for the words.

"Amazing?" you finished with a laugh.

From the first moment I saw you, I knew you were different from everyone else and it was precisely your difference that made me want to know you.  You felt like escape, you felt like another world entirely.  There was something about the way you moved through space as if you were slicing through various realities, as if you were so confident and clear about what was and what was to come.  Sure, you were beautiful, but that wasn't what drew me to you.  It was the way you walked about your day as if everything were in its proper place; it was as it should be.  You, unlike everyone else, didn't seem to hunger with want.  You were and are content to be.  How very Zen of you.  I tried to explain this once during a lull at the shop.

“I think you think too much” you said smiling.  “But thanks for the compliments”

“Yes, you’re right, perhaps I do think too much” I rolled the idea around in my mind.

“You’re thinking too much right now”

“Yes” I said seriously.

She pinched me on the arm, “Snap out of it will you?  Your brain is going to overheat pretty soon”

You had a way and it wasn’t something that you put on to make yourself seem better.  You simply were better.  I’m so sorry for what I’ve done to you.


You were to work the morning shift until noon on that Tuesday.  I was supposed to come in at noon.  What happened to me, you must being wondering, what happened to me, why wasn’t I there to help you when you had helped me so many times before?  There is no gentle way, no nice way of relating the following events, so I will write them plainly in the hopes that you can perhaps cleanse your troubled conscious. 

I hated working at the coffee shop, I hated the town.  I had developed a habit of drinking a little or a lot, depending on my liquor stash, before work. I wanted to take the edge off what I believed was a rapidly declining quality of life.  Things had gotten worse, I was feeling more and more depressed about my situation and the fact that I was so far from what I expected of myself.  The incessant rain, of course, did not help ease my depression.  So that morning I woke with not a sunny thought in my head.  I pulled out the cheap vodka I had bought a few days ago and poured myself a shot.  I meandered through my morning, taking shots and clipping my toenails.  I remember distinctly, because I replay this moment over and over in my head, when I reached for the bottle, my head a little swirly and thought to myself, “If I drink anymore, I may be too drunk to make it to work”.  I looked out the window and the rain was coming down in sheets, like a curtain was continually closing on my life. 

I lifted the bottle and poured another shot.  The seconds it took me to make that decision, that selfish, selfish decision, the small stature of that little glass would change everything.  Of course, I didn’t think of it like that.  I didn’t think of anything really only of wallowing in my own self pity.  Bottom’s up!  Before I knew it was time to leave for work.  I was much too drunk to drive, I knew, so in my inebriated state I decided to ride my bicycle to work.  It’s a good fifteen miles from my house to the coffee shop as you know and uphill almost the entire way but I pedaled onward regardless of the futility of the situation. About five minutes into my bike ride, it began to rain. And it rained. And it rained. I was getting soaked and was too drunk to pedal with such limited vision not to mention the steep incline that I began to walk my bike up the hills. I can't remember if I was crying. I do vaguely remember seeing a pine tree at the top of one of the hills and thinking how I would like to take a rest for a while.

I was shaken awake by my mother who smelt of lemons and cigarettes. It was no longer raining but she was in a bright yellow raincoat nonetheless. My sisters were in the backseat and the youngest one pushed her tiny Polly pocket up against the window.

“Honey!  Honey!  Are you alright?” my mother’s voice was shaking.

"What?"  I asked wearily.

"What the hell are you doing over here?"

It was a good question. I looked down at myself, soaking wet, your freshly starched apron wrapped around my waist. "I don't know"

"You don't know?" my mother shouted, "you don't know" she was shaking.

"I was trying to go to work" I said, trying to sound somewhat responsible.

"Well, obviously you didn't make it. Your boss Michael called me and asked where you were. I got worried and drove this street up and down looking for you." her eyes began to water, "Thank god your sister saw the reflection of your bike's handle bar in the grass" I could see her shoes were soaked and water had traveled by capillary action up her pants to her knees. Capillary action. I learned that much in college.

"I’m sorry" I muttered.

She let herself fall on her knees into the grass. "I’m just happy you're okay" and she hugged me so tight I thought I would break into a million little pieces.

"There was an accident at the coffee shop, poor thing" she said.  I was looking over her shoulder at the tiny Polly pocket in the window, "your friend Rachel. Apparently she dropped boiling tea on a little baby".

hope

how do i even begin?  it's been so long, i'm not sure if i recognize me.  recognize the serious and sympathetic, the poignant and poetic.  at least i hope i was these things, hope i am these things.  it's already november and i haven't written anything of creative substance in almost a month.  the reason?  i'm afraid of failing.  just starting seems much too difficult.  it's as if i've lost who i am.  in part that is.  i'm flourishing in so many ways but those ways have not made it to the page and i fear that perhaps they never will.  can't be as fresh, can't let the butter of their true brilliance saturate the layers of a freshly baked hot biscuit.  at least i hope they were fresh, i hope they were brilliant.  they were, are, to me anyway.

it feels so strange writing again.  it feels difficult to let it all spill onto the page.  sadness and confusion are easier to write than fear.  fear, i fear, doesn't look very good on me. 

i move from the bed to the chair an admission that perhaps this timid little post might actually be my re-introduction.  who knows.  but i hope.  there isn't much of that around these days, hope.  wasn't that obama's slogan, hope?  that was bold.  another four letter word.  fear.  also four letters.  but i won't go on enumerating four letter words.   what is this about?  me.  yes me.  i've grown so much.  i'm not sure if you can see it.  can't quite catch it with a measuring stick, but i know i've changed.  as i should and as i have no choice.  but i'd like to think that my recognition is worth something.  i wish i could tell you everything that i've been learning.  i wish i could get it all down onto the page.  i hope someday i will.  until then, i continue to punch keys in the dark and pray that i won't be afraid to write exactly what's in my mind.  honesty.  and not try to repackage how i'm feeling because the Buddhists remind me to be mindful and of mind.  yes, i'm trying.  i'm thinking so hard it hurts.  to be simply myself.  to do as best i can in this life.  to live and to write words as they come to me.  not to lose the honesty, the open heartedness of it all.  is the difficulty in my mind alone?  i am overwhelmed by all the details of this life and i'm afraid to write because i don't know if i can do them justice and i'm afraid i won't remember it all and i'm afraid it won't have enough heart or eloquence or wit.  i'm afraid i'll get it wrong, i'll botch this beautiful thing called life.  lately i have been fearful.  i hope, with this uncomfortable admission, i will make my way back to writing.  i hope.  i hope.

broken leg

seaweed mind floating
clown fish ducking coral
my magnified eyes.

the coffee habit is getting worse or the dreams more clingy and demanding.  i can't shake the night like i used to.  i called annie on tuesday to tell her i most certainly broke my leg.  she paused and shook her head, shifted her weight onto her left side because her right hip gives her trouble.  i called her, not paid her a visit, and still i can picture her reactions exactly.  of course, she didn't believe me.  a broken leg, a broken leg.  yes, a broken leg.  i pinned the phone to my ear with my shoulder and licked the paper to number eight hand rolled cigarettes that day.  i roll my own because i'm cheap and because i like to think the loose leaf tobacco is healthier for you and i like to think that if i must roll my own i won't smoke as much.  truth is, with a broken leg, there isn't much else to do. 

annie didn't like my haiku.  she said it was nice, really nice.  if i wanted my writing to be nice i would have gone into business or political science.  but i was a poetry major, a poetry major who didn't really like poetry at all.  however, when you're told you have a knack for verse, when enough people tell you, you start to believe it.  i never felt it though, never felt the joy that some writers experience from a good day of writing.  i never felt moved to write above all else.  it never pained me or racked my mind.  in fact, i see very little of myself in the writing.  it's not like a broken leg, you feel one with a broken leg, you feel connected.

i'm a published poet a few times over.  annie was the first to publish me in a small literary journal she worked for through the community college.  she believes in my writing but not my broken leg.  i don't understand the world.  i say world because annie is so like the rest of them.  maybe my pain medication is making me misanthropic, but truly, the world has gone mad, mad.  in fact, part of me is happy to have a broken leg so i don't have to run the rat race with the rest of them.  another part of me thinks i should break the other leg so that when my building is set ablaze by the growing riots in the city, i won't be able to run away, i'll fall, just as so many iconic others. 

annie tells me i should use this story, this image, this delusion as fodder for my next poem.  broken leg.  two words i've latched onto she says, two words that i must free myself of.  but, but, but, but, i try to explain, this isn't poetry, this is my life.  i broke my leg.  i'm in a cast.  i'm in so much pain, i barely can move, but i called you.  i'm smoking again, okay, still.  but life is poetry annie whispers like she said something wonderful and profound, as if art was this divine, enlightened state.  life is not poetry.  poetry sometimes is life.  but most days a broken leg is simply the discontinuation of part of the femur from its other part.  some people romanticize everything.  i let the phone drop into my lap.  annie is trying to calm me in that ti chi way of hers.  i light my cigarette and let her voice grow louder and more frustrated, then tired and apathetic.  a little symphony of emotions. 

crack and snap and wrap
up the bone that once was whole
mend and sew and sew.

working through meditation

dip your little head into my warm thoughts i say.  even words seem foreign.  already too light for this world the bubbles rush to the surface of my tea.  there's so much that i want to tell you.  but i don't even know who you are, that is, you are me, of this i am coming to see.  but you feel separate too.  or something.  who are you?  multiple mes spilling out like jelly beans skidding across the linoleum floor.  buttered popcorn are your favorite.  i've always liked licorice.  there's a word that looks nothing like it sounds, licorice.  and my mind is undisciplined.  you are undisciplined.  scrappy little kid, rambunctious little urchin.  urchin or puffer fish or tea bag floating on the surface like a sunfish.  who am i? i ask you.  and you laugh and dart.  don't the books tell you?  don't you know?  how silly.  aren't you nothing?  aren't you nothing and everything, a multifaceted jewel in a unending web of inter strung multifaceted jewels? 

the tea that steeps beside me at this very moment is called 'detox'.  i hope to flush my system, to clear a path in the forest of my fragmented mind.  unfortunately, the tea is too hot to sip and i must live with my insanity a little longer.  the sound of fingers against keys...ah revelry!  listen to the sound of each word as you say it.  sound, say, sound, say...like waves.  does it not make you so hungry and alive?  oh you, you, you, youyouyouyou, you just    wanted    release.  needed to write.  yes.  not insanity.  put away the DSM, you are okay.  and we are talking and you've stopped scrawling inappropriate images in the hallway.  yes, it's been a while since you've heard the clack, clack, clack. like the sway of a ballroom dancer on pointed heels, waiting, tapping, your foot, clack, clack,clack,clack music of the keys...oh the beauty!

and now that you are free what is it you wanted to say?  say that i love the keys, i love the flat, smooth surfaces of them, that i'm in love with the look of my fingers dancing across them, that i love the image of each character and the power to bring meaning from the flat little slates, to design worlds, to make music, to free myself to enter into some greater arena.  to dedicate myself to the meticulous detail of putting it all together one little line at a time.  first the t then the i then m then the e.  time.  writing is meditation.  to be distanced from writing, to be taken from it, is to be pulled from my very self.  there is no one absolute way to enlightenment and there is, i do not think, one absolute moment of enlightenment.  that is to say, one does not become enlightened and forever stay that way.  enlightenment or deep understanding comes in a variety of forms.  to maintain balance i must write and remember that writing is not a task, but an immensely beautiful form that i am able to revel and steep myself in.  it is me.  i must remember to love it as a connection to myself.  i must approach it as i should approach myself, embracing every character, every tap, every image because it is divine. 
 

objects in a room-item 1

i have a sympathetic cursor.  sweet little thing.  holds it's tiny blinking breath when i do.  exhales brightly once i enter with a word.  an optimist, the cursor simply soldiers on with my sometimes prosaic prose.  "the dog did not wash", i type.  and it blinks in delight, "what then?  what then?" as if i had something very profound to follow with.

there is an angel on my window sill.  (cursor: "yes! yes! and what of that angel?").  and she is covered in light dust (or perhaps a dust of light) and she stands above my head.  the day has bloomed and progress is underway.  i hear cars tearing up and down the road and the clamor of hard living beating against pavement.  there are metal birds in the sky.  i'm still under blankets thick with the scent of french pressed coffee, ink stains on my fingers from when i was born scrawling out illegible lines for the sake of speech and release.  i grab hold of the angel and take her from the sill.  i must open a window, extract myself slowly from the womb of solitude let the air of the outside world brush against my wool sweater and matted hair.  i slide open the window with one hand, the other hand is holding the angel.  i would hate to have knocked her down accidentally.  sometimes angels fall when you open yourself to the world.  the breeze is gentle, the touch light.  bits of sound squeeze through the mesh frame, just enough to keep me connected, just enough so i'm still free.  i put the angel back on the window sill.  she holds a bright feather and smiles down at me, her wings fluttering in the new air.

what will become of...?

yes, that is the question.  and what about...?  precisely.  each action is so complicated isn't it?  the implications of everyday life.  would you speak plainly.  sometimes i fear i most certainly cannot. 

reflection moon

i am overwhelmed by the selves i was
by the selves i will be
and am
presently.
selves folding out of the sea
like unicorns
silver
and untouchable to the mundane
sacred selves.
 
moonlight's grip
cracks me open like an egg
like a magical, mystical
geode
revealing all the shiny bits of soul
to the icy, clean morning air.

what if i craved my life
as if i were connected to everything?
what if i let loose such a cataclysmic compassion?
could i then look to the moon
and understand why i am crying?

narwhals and birches

soon it'll all be gone and i'll be sitting in this chair rubbing my knees wondering where it went.  that's how it goes, the months, the years, the times you thought, for better or worse, would last forever.  soon i'll be an old maid and the image won't be nearly as frightening as it first appeared to me in my twenties.  i'll sit back and take in the birches with a steaming cup of coffee.  some things never change.  coffee and me and the birch trees that is. 

i try to remind myself that this moment will be like no other ever again.  it is unique, unimaginable, surreal even in its transitory nature.  but isn't it easy to get caught up in the living, get caught up in trying to delineate a particular place for each experience, each memory?  i am tired.  and i want to sleep.  but i'll be missing the unique moments that were set before me like gods on Disney holiday.  who would want to miss that?

i sip my coffee and let my mind tilt toward the birches.  feel the bark under my hot hands and savor what i think will be a beautiful future.

i'm on an adventure.  going someplace new.  i hope to unearth myself.  and in this hope i've discovered little pricks of self doubt and destructive constructions surfacing like long forgotten narwhals, narwhals that pierce skin and expose inside secrets. 

there must be something done with the deleterious parts of oneself.  i rack my mind trying to understand why i behave in the ways that i do.  laid on a bed and talked to a shrink.  she doesn't have a degree but she is my friend and perhaps that makes her better qualified.  what is this talk of narwhals and birches?

i am walking through the forest.  the birch trees have lost their leaves.  there is snow on the ground but i'm warm, wearing nothing more than an oversized t-shirt.  pegged into the trees like gigantic darts are narwhals.  one waves a flipper at me and smiles.  her smile reminds me those destructive parts of self will always remain.  sometimes hidden, sometimes crashing through the ocean of me, but always, always living.  and so i'm led to the next question, what do i do with these thoughts of narwhals and birches?  what do i do with me?

beautiful you, beautiful me

aren't we special?  please tell me we are special.  i don't want to die alone.  i want to die in arms clasped tightly.  i want to die under hot breath.  i want to die being held together and never being let go.  i want it to end softly and with great love.  aren't we special?  i think we must be.  you are the bits of me that escaped, that flew out in the corners of the world and sang to the most charming worldly clouds, who lived and loved and longed to come back me.  and i am the bits of you that escaped, that swam to the deepest trenches and serenaded the ancient creatures, who lived and loved and longed to come back to you.

i love you.  it's a strange thing.  love.  not what i expected.  not gushy.  not full of low lights and soft music.  not brilliant one liners.  not long pans across exposed torsos and close ups of dilated pupils and the sounds of bated breath.  no.  it is maple leaf covered roads in northern new hampshire and the sound of your guitar and the way my soul sways whenever i hear you sing.  i remember your lungs; i remember your hugs.  i remember being held tightly, transported to someplace where there is coalescence, where i felt altogether content and present. 

i miss you.  part of me run out and searching.  part of you run out and searching.  i put your letter close to my chest.  let your words hug me, clasp tightly around my body.  make me feel special.  make me ready to sleep a while.  sleep a while.  aren't we special?  how very beautiful we are.  beautiful you, beautiful me. 
 

the desk

a big, heavy desk has landed in my room.  an emu.  or perhaps something a little less clunky and a touch more regal.  an eagle.  or perhaps something less Americana and coined.  an albatross.  perhaps something with a little less sea.  a pterodactyl.  perhaps it wasn't so much flying when it landed, maybe it just landed.  a meteorite.  perhaps a little smaller.  a commercial airliner.  again too much America and too much smoke and mirrors.  maybe i'll just call it what it is and not try to turn into something else.  a dignified and decent desk has landed in my room.  i think i love it though i don't even know it yet.  could it be possible? 

(my body hungers for winter, for the cuddle sap of snow and the glow of light when the world outside is white and frosted and still.  i have a need for the cycle.  the need for the cycle). 

a big, heavy desk has handed in my room and it stands upright as a soldier, it came from the navy.  perhaps life changing decisions where transcribed on it's face, and life saving or breaking deals were passed across it. could it be possible?   

stomach flu

in my feverish slumber i imagined myself a cow, a dairy cow.  i was one of many, each of us having a mailbox shaped body.  and each time my stomach turned in on itself and began punching out with electric shock boxing gloves, i imagined that we cows where being driven by prods to our milking stations.  and i would get up in my great agony and nearly crawl on my hands and knees toward the great porcelain milking machine.  and there i would release and writhe, the beige walls and a clock that ticks but whose second hand never moves were my only witnesses.  my eyes never opened.  i would lay myself down in the pasture of my twin bed and wait for the next milking.  but i knew and all the other cows knew that the farmers were getting no milk.  they were mistaking the water coming out of us for milk which was foolish and these farmers never seemed to learn.  i looked for logic, an explanation.  i gathered my cow friends next to me and pondered.  it began to thunder, the rumbling in my stomach transformed into menacing skies.  i watched as the rain began to collect in our open top mail box bodies.  that was it!  our bodies were filling with water because we had our open sides facing the sky.  it wasn't going to stop raining, but we could, i told my cow friends, we could turn ourselves over and lay with our open backs facing the ground that way when it rained no water would fill us and the farmers wouldn't think we needed milking and we wouldn't have to deal with all the pain!  very satisfied, i flipped over onto my back and continued to sleep.  only, i'm not a cow really and certainly i do not have a mailbox body.  i was back at the milking station within minutes mournfully mooing my existence.

and so my stomach flu has gone on and on.  each day i'm milked of the precious little liquids i am able to take in.  yet i'm afflicted with a sickening sense of hope.  hope it will get better.  in my last post i mentioned starving.  starving! an exaggeration, a haha harbinger of a soon to be awol abdomen. none of it was planned i assure you so let the pity rain, none of it was planned and i'm still sipping on chicken broth and nursing bottles of orange gatorade. it wasn't my fault. one doesn't write about starving metaphorically in one post only to have its shadow glance upon her for four wretched days on purpose. but, there is light this morning. banana and a bit of oatmeal cling fearfully in the bowels of my serpentine cistern, savage-sick stomach.  yes, there is hope still.

writing for writing's sake

one pines away for what she does not have
and then when they say
"look upon the feast in front of you"
she replies,
"how can i think about eating when my soul is starving"?

and so it goes on and on.  i'm noticing patterns, i'm picking up on repetition like the ridges on fingertips, lining up like waves waiting to happen.  and so the world is full of imperfect relationships.  how do you remember to love in the darkness?  and how dark is it really?  only so dark perhaps as the thickness of your closed eyes.  i'm breathing all the time and that's remarkable really.  i get to be part of all this. 

slapping at muscle, i watch the gravity of myself sway.  it's a beautiful thing, the body.  and i love you. 

today i said i wouldn't miss the imaginary snow of your imaginary eclipse.  remember?  sometimes i wonder if you do remember.  me.  but you were set on the show and somehow i faded away into the white out streets.

i love you. i love you. i love you.  it still sounds sacred to me. 

what i do

i had a dream where i went to a large bookstore in portland and i looked for all credible sources who wrote on the subject of love and the meaning of life.  i was looking for a purpose.  i got lost in the stacks.  i was so far gone that my hair grew long and my teeth began to rot.  when i emerged the year was 2020.

there will be a train that runs through my town.  my town will be the accident of some years of quick passion between commerce and a river.  then we many offspring will litter the streets looking for things to do, writing graffiti on the walls of railway underpasses, looking for our fathers. 

i am surrounded by mountains, three primarily--mauna kea, mauna loa and hualalai--and two that float in the distance like prettier sirens i'd like to know.  perhaps i'm bashing my head against a rock just to see which is stronger.  lava rock is porous and jagged just as it is smooth.  life grows here as life is resilient, much more resilient than my throbbing head.  i'm not trying to get ahead, i just don't want to be left behind.  it's as simple as that. 

i'm the keeper of little, green leafy things with highfalutin names and the killer of little, green leafy things with common names simplified on their boat ride over.  we need not know the genealogy of the russian thistle or the bull thistle or the fireweed or the fountain grass.  we need only know that we don't want them and thus we must kill them.  they are, after all, seedy characters.  no, i'm here to encourage the growth and expansion of the "native" species.  the solum incompetum, tetramalopium arenarium, silene lanceolata, kadua corciacea.  what regal names.  everything you might want to know about who they are is right on their little tag.  such a generous life for the chosen ones. 

i work in a unique environment.  high altitude.  jogging five minutes in the fine dust filled air will mostly likely give you tuberculous.  don't say you heard it from me.  and there are bombs out there.  old, cranky things, but still with the power to explode if provoked.  i stay away from brown, rusted things or unnaturally shiny things.  i stick to the fleshy, relatively benevolent little martians of mother nature.

unlike the bombs which can stay active for years on end, nature goes in cycles.  weeds gather up muster, spread themselves as best they can like too little peanut butter on too big a piece of bread and then they die.  it's my job to kill them before they mature.  if you want to be dramatic about it then i'm what you might consider a baby killer.  but please remember those finely named princes and princesses who i protect and pamper like my own newborns.  i am not without redemption. 

i hope i'm getting my point across and it is clear what i do.  thirty pounds of liquid herbicide adorns my back every day.  i traverse through the mountains like a spider makes track lines across distant branches.  in the end i have a poisoned field of dying russian thistle, bull thistle, fountain grass, fireweed.   in the end the spider has it's web.  its not really the same thing at all. 

the terrain is difficult, very difficult.  the lava rock is shifty and uncertain of itself, constantly rolling under your too tired ankles and it's sharp points finding the soft, fleshy muscle at the base of your toes and like a apathetic soldier to simulation, it aims its bayonet sharpness and thrusts into you.  dead trees and sticks make final pleas to cling to something living often piercing skin in the process and causing angry retaliation with spine snapping deconstructions and shoulder popping pitches of the offensive woody being further into the wasteland of what is widely known and accepted as the "impact area"

just to be clear, you haven't heard any of this from me.

my feet are a war zone.  but i keep my mind elevated.  i look out to the horizon and imagine trains in a town i don't yet know.  i imagine small coffee shops and long trails lined with deciduous trees.  i imagine bookstores and libraries so large that i could lose myself.  i dream these places.  but i log down this place.  it's strange how we human creatures operate.  all day you gaze over imaginary fences hoping to get "there" and then once you're there part of you can't help missing the former "here".  and so i log down the time i spend carefully sunk down in the hollow of the Big Island's collar bone.  i make careful note of what i see.  i want to remember it all.

there once was a girl who lived in a small house.  not a red house or a green one or even a robin's egg blue one, but a plain, matte colored white house.  it glowed in the dark.  that was her favorite part.  when all the other houses bedded down and sunk into their lawns, her house remained fretfully perched on it's grass like a nervous white dove only it wasn't that pretty.  so perhaps it was closer to a white pigeon.  and it did like to coo.

the girl went to a job she hated like most law abiding citizens.  she held out happiness saying she was "saving up".  she would allow herself a few indulgences like most law abiding citizens.  a movie here, a new car payment there.  anything to tell herself she was getting away.

there's nothing like getting away, she thought.  she searched for escape in other people.  if you don't know what this is like, then watch for the one who stares too long at your eye lashes.  they are wondering what worlds you've beat upon before this one.  they are imagining themselves a fleck of dust resting on your lashes like an arab on a camel.  they want you to take them for a ride.  anywhere, anywhere away from here.

i met her outside her little white house.  i was desperately nursing on the final drops of some delicious stumptown coffee, or perhaps it was folgers, but i like to pretend.  and that's precisely what we found in one another.  pretend.  make believe.  we were both masters of un-reality. 

stripping the morning pages for tenderloin

06/29
the moon looks like it belongs in some vampire movie.  a sliver in the southwest corner of god's celestial canvas, tumultuous and brooding clouds below--deep purple with red undergarments--and clear just above the horizon.  it's early morning and my ride has arrived.  i suppose i cannot paint the sky or the moon without some measure of tragedy.

07/03
i have every intention of climbing down into the valley today, but most importantly, i have every intention of climbing back out. 

each step is deliberate.

07/05
who wouldn't want to be the their own creator?  in the realm of language, i can be a queen, and more!  i am exactly natural, exactly exacting.  true flowing.

07/06
we who push along through our days.

the mountain is very imposing this morning and my heart hangs heavy in it's cage.

07/11
there are salutations slung over her shoulder like second thoughts.

how do you get the feel without the touch?

07/20
there is air trapped in my spine.  i try to exhale but perhaps its the change in elevation that is pressurizing me.  and i'm pressured to be as great as my name--the most glorious sunrise--but i don't feel so glorious sometimes. 

muzzle to your throat, my muzzle to your throat.  so soft, so soft i think it's butter cream frosting.  butter cream and my muzzle sniffing at your secrets. 

fog.  its as if i'm in a snow globe.  i half expect to see a huge, hungry eye waiting to see if i move then shake up the globe to see whose really playing dead.  and i am expected to emerge from the fog a moving and heartbreaking creature, something like a glorious sunrise. 

it's not the inhale i'm having trouble with, it's the exhale.  bubbles in the spine, some prehistoric condition of the bends. 

i remain a land locked line unable to return to the ocean but always, always flinting at its shore, squiggly, squiggly little wave want-to-be. 

the mountain is a stallion i palm and pet. and he breathes softly under me.  today we are one, mountain and me. 

ASR 11

moon rock stranger rusting. 
but new.  though rusted. 
only just born, considering, relative. 
you've come from nothing else.
all ego, all bravado, you are your own creature
lava rock. 
some circumstance, some passion
but perhaps without the emotional component
rather just...
hot.
born up too quickly
raised to a temperature too burning
you weren't able to form the true weight of yourself
weren't able to come to terms with your substance.
you are airy and light
and porous
you're full of negative space
but had you not been born of spontaneity and iridescence
had you been forged slowly
then maybe you could hold yourself
to earth
rather than crumble and break into violent, angry pieces of glass
then maybe you'd find a softness given to a rocked shape
then maybe you'd find humility
and let other things take you over.

ah, but can i argue a moon rock stranger out of it's nature?
ah but you are a wild hardness
you will be jagged for lifetimes
hiding long tubes of air underground until
one day
some unsuspecting creature crashes through your consciousness
makes you reveal your lightness of being.

until then you are instantly born and instantly aged. 
there is no childhood.
we break you down to cinders and throw you in with our potting soil.
how could such majesty be contained?

shaking my reality (08/01 journal)

i am in a divot, in a small little dent on an infinite sided die and sometimes i roll up and sometimes i roll down and sometimes i'm hanging sideways, pushed up against some wall with a million drunken eyes clapping and gin shaking in their teeth.  i like being in the image because at least it wasn't here, not here.  not.  here.  who is?  really and anyway.  i'm just half-way to nowhere. 

yet, each day is different... and ellipses are my best friends....

imagine living in a world of words.  so many sharp points.  could you impale yourself on words?  indeed.  all the time. 

roads extend from my fingers like spines all brittle and cracked like they have been left out in the sun for much too long and have become themselves desert sunsets. 

shadows and dark spots.  writing is like breathing.  could it be less?  the poet is poetic.  the aesthetic is aesthetic and i am a writer and that makes me free.  

i am an immovable object (or how i came to realize)

i am an immovable object
the world is...very profound.  
i think therefore i am. 
i wonder about a lot of things. 
i am under appreciated in my time. 
and what then of the roses? 
there is starry slightnesses all around.
why?  does it matter?
just know that it is and
therefore you are, therefore
i am...very profound. 

i am an immovable object. 
that is so and this is so. 
i break down into immovable parts like scales on a fish,
fleshy exhale, posing, puffed up, as catatonic water droplets are known to do. 
catatonic water droplets sent to sleep by a fledgling gravity. 
gravity that we all sleep into. 
(i wonder why the hell it stinks in here) 
my legs are warm from where the sun muscled over my being,
muscled over, thought over,
carried over the carriage of a broken hearted God's collar bone. 
yes, even gods get broken hearts. 
no one is above love. 
not even an immovable object. 
love is a force times a trillion to the power of four headed bulls racing through the throat of a dragon.  do you know your mythical measurements? 

you have to be present to understand this....is not for understanding. 
i have a fleece,        fleeting,        golden apple toting golden fleece folded mind. 
it whips up images that can only be described as truffles of cocoa brilliance. 
it's amazing what i can draft in a golden holy place
in the shade of some enlightened brain stem. 
but that's primitive--my rambling brain stem,
that's primitive--the clouds, the storm, the cerebral congestion, consecration, copulation
that's primitive--the cloud calling cowlicks that i espouse and the orgasmic dew i spew onto the page. 
i rambling child,
i undisciplined artist,
i crazy draw outside the lines, deranged, uncontained being. 
i primitive, i cocoa truffle, i golden fleece folded mind, i under appreciated girl.
i immovable object! 

am i an immovable object? 
i fit inside a bar of soap and i lather the world in perfumed happiness
so that we can be cleaned, squeaky and shiny
and able to accept that we are simply little flecks moving around (yes moving!) in a sneeze just starting to flair up. 
none of this matters. 
we all fall apart in the end. 
none of us are immovable objects. 
all of us are objects,
all of us are love,
all of us are clouds,
all of us are m&ms. 
and when we lose our hard candy shell and realize we're all nuggets of delightful cocoa on the inside, we can apologize for everything we've done to hurt ourselves,
to hurt one another. 
but m&ms don't have mouths and if they did they'd be drawn on the candy shell and
if we lost our shells then what can we do? 
be silent
and know we were right and wrong all along. 
right and wrong. 
loved and under appreciated. 
often at the same time.
but we were never, ever immovable objects.
and that's what makes it all worth anything.

i see the fire from here

i see the smoke from the top of this hill.  i'm hanging off the side of the cell phone tower.  hanging from sentences spoken and silences, few, but sharp silences, and a sensation that this was a mistake.  i watch the smoke billow from a fire i could have prevented.  but i'm no smokey.  i'm lonely. 

buzz, buzz, buzz, dive into the fire.  trembling lip and lock jaw.  what are you going to do now?  what are you going to say?  how do you cover your nakedness when you can't move anything but your eyes? blink, blink, blink, the fire is on fire.  and it's licking at your bones.  but it's warm see and you've longed for this warmth even if it's coming from fear.  what is affection but fear?  fear that you don't have enough of this so you gravitate to that. 

the night time is thick and you want to ask questions.  you want to get close but you don't know why.  and inside you feel like a bruised melon that has just been balled.  scooped out; you were overripe with too much trying.  push, push, push back into the fire.  you can't escape it.  you're drawn.  how does it go?  the moth to the...?  no, no, the human heart to the smack and slap of a cool mind.  a cool mind, a too cool mind but in your delusion you mistake the smoke coming from the dry ice for steam, for heat, for a warm, blood pumping place.  but this isn't the case see?

you must learn that this is not to be tolerated.  this buzz, buzz, buzz, this push, push, push, this cast, cast, cast will hurt you.  step away from the illusion.  build your own fire and nurture your chest, nurture it like the finest possession you'll ever have.  because it is, because it's yours.  because it's the only hope for future happiness.  don't burn it up in bad associations.  leap, leap, leap back into yourself with reckless abandon and start loving from there. 

where art goes

it came in a small box, fed ex. it is gone now. it didn't take long to sweep it from my life.

art evokes emotion. art is created and destroyed. what is sentimentality? if it evoked emotion, if it made me fear, made me cautious, made me curious, then didn't it do it's part? wasn't it born art? didn't it die art?

it was light not even a pound. it was dark and heavy more than a ton, metaphorically. what's more important the actuality or the metaphor? the substance or the symbol?

9 am on a saturday

9 am on a saturday. 
the day begins as it would. 
a rubble mountain of Cherrios
a small ceramic bowl
the last of the soy milk drizzled on top.
plunging spoon
goes in and out
like a kingfisher plumbs the sea. 
my eyes are closed. 
my stomach has been hungry since 3:30.

the gangsters in my head

"leave behind a trail of crumbs and hungry people will come".  that's what Jimmy the Bonnet always says.  "Bonnet" because he kept everything under wraps and "Jimmy" because his real name was Earl and everyone knew that Earl was no name for a gangster.  Jimmy likes to make the seemingly small and insignificant into something meaningful.  perhaps he is so obsessed with symbols and meaning because he, himself, isn't real.  he is, however, real enough to me, real enough to a kid who just spilt a large sum of crumbs from a crushed up granola bar on her desk, a kid who worries that worst than perhaps the Feds or other gangsters coming after you, there were ants to worry about.  "ants like moles" Jimmy would say with a smile pulling a small flask of whisky out from under his red, swollen and pock marked nose.  but there are no "real" gangsters in this kids life, in my life, no gangsters save the ones enlivened by symbol and metaphor.  and those are just the kind of gangsters i prefer anyway.  ones whose smoke i can feel and whose hot breath i can almost taste, almost, but don't have to.  i can enjoy the pleasantry of the image as an image.  the perfect image without side affects: smell, heat, sound, unpredictability.  the gangsters in my head are not mean.  they are simply take no crap from anybody kind of guys.  they like their whiskey and they like their smokes and they like to dress sharp.  and for some odd reason they like me.  a scrawny white kid in my mind wearing a baggy white t-shirt so thin my peach skin pokes through rendering the entire fabric a little rosy.  and i'm sitting at an old fashioned type writer.  why a typewriter?  why not?  and my shirt has skinny navy stripes on it.  and i'm still me.  my face is the same.  only now i'm in some attic or other high place posing for a picture before my typewriter.  Jimmy the Bonnet has his hand on my knee like an adoring father and several of the other "boys" (though all are large and hefty and hardly boys at all but men) are gathered around me.  they all have cigarettes drooping from their lips.  Jimmy and I are the only ones smiling.  something tells me this must be how the mind copes.  come up with your own imaginary possy when a real one doesn't exist.  no one would mess with this scrawny kid if they knew the company she held.  my mind grows giddy and bright.  i smile again.  the light flashes and the still frame is permanent in my mind.  just me and the guys.  me and the gangsters in my head. 

sense of cinnamon

the smell of cinnamon cookies, however false they are in actuality, gives me the sense that i'm at your bedside waiting.  but the scent of a memory is just that, a scent, a scant sense of something that existed in a time i'm not sure actually existed.  and you, well, you, with tubes coming out of your nose and a bald head, you never looked like this before.  i can't say if i'm dreaming or if i'm remembering or if i'm predicting.  is it possible for past lives to bleed into the current one?  is it possible to leap ahead in time?

cinnamon scented candle and we are dancing together alone.  some poor rendition of a waltz.  our tongues and lips dyed purple from the red wine your parents gave us as a gift.  they live in napa valley.  you've been drinking wine since you were twelve but you revel in my pixie drunk, all silly drunk and seizing one of your toes beneath mine for a moment.  the wrestling of weights of masses we meld into one another. 

i see you so clearly sometimes.  hair colored cinnamon.  just one image.  the fine soft wisps of your hair pushing against your closed eyes.  the contented curl of your lips sliding along the quiver of soulful violin's serenade.  face softer than the white white sheets beneath you.  you are beautiful.  and when i see you, i know i am destined for a great love.

cinnamon sticks as big as trees.  a black bench in the wintertime, night slowly descending from the sky like snow.  it's quiet.  you pull the glove from my hand and the glove from yours.  summer in the quiet of winter.

i'm on a bus.  i see you for the first time reading a book.  i imagine everything that would come after.  i imagine us translating clouds, telling stories, reading each other to sleep, sharing bowls of oatmeal, heavy with butter and outlined in fissures of cinnamon.   

i am walking alone through a big empty field that looks like a sheet of paper, all white.  i mark it for the first time.  pines begin to fill in the edges and guide me home.  the snow is deep but i don't find it difficult to walk, in fact, i would guess i were floating if it weren't for the depressions i find behind me.  i seem to be walking forever.  i have been walking for an eternity.  but i feel no fatigue.  i only dream of seeing you in our little cabin on the hill making cinnamon cookies.

when i kiss you it tastes like cinnamon.  you smile and my lips feel your teeth.  freckles are scrunched up on your nose and you laugh.  you tickle my sides and i hold you tighter.