the lingering lyric

"tell me someday if we talk, are you afraid of being haunted"

this line is lingering in my low-lighted mind like lost lovers. the repetition, the echo, the ghostly hollow of still-borne affections laying prone in these forgotten hollers, fall into me like shards of snow. i put us here, in this romantic landscape although we've never seen snow. not together. but if there is any place for death, it would be here, in some blissfully noplace vale, and we, two, crouched by an icy river, not feeling the numbing cold, but smiling with chapped lips at the poetry of it all.

that's the problem with poets. all beauty and no sense. it's just a lyric but the words reverberate in my pulse as the only syllables worth living for. how perfectly and poetically dramatic. but there is no us, no icy river, no terrible curse or symphony composed heartbreak. you do not exist. this lost comes from someplace else. i hired you to play in this macabre scene because there is something real here, something i can't touch because i don't want to, perhaps it's too sharp or too vague or too rough or too fragile, perhaps it's too close, too close, even for me. this line drums in my ears constantly. there is something i must set out into the world, over and over again until i have embraced the reality. i want something prettier than myself, i want something darker than my lonliness, i want a scene so steeped in tragedy that the whole world will weep. why? because this is what it feels like, this line, "tell me someday if we talk, are you afraid of being haunted". the reality feels more like the poetry, and the everyday experience of life is deeper than what's in front of us. of course, and so, crouching next to you, you without a face, with cold hands, the eyes of an icy river, being with you in a hushed holler deep within me, is the reality. in this line, i exist in a more full understanding of time. here, typing, here heart pounding, eyes darting, here, holding your hand, here, remembering.

tell me someday if we talk, are you afraid of being haunted. and i'll tell you that i am haunted. i used to think that i spoke this line, this was mine to ask of another. but the more i hear it, the more i know, it's me. this line haunts me. but what am i afraid of?

balance

every morning
i practice:
find the balance
of a cup of coffee on the bed
it's not easy
to find the balance
don't shake too much
don't do anything rash
remain calm
don't lunge for it
coo to it softly
a little pressure from your palm
have it slide down the white sheets
slowly,
into your trembling hands.

there's a fine line between want and need
to balance this cup
is to risk the cleanliness of my white, white sheets
and so it is with people,
a balancing act
don't let the cup spill over
not too much
just enough of this and that
of want and need
and be willing
to risk your white, white composure
for this
love,
for this
balance.

the mute

"today is the beginning of your new life"

i scoff. what's that supposed to mean? i don't really know, but the words feel good against my body. in the shower i give a speech and the soap, is speechless. it's best to give speeches in the shower because all your mistakes are washed away instantly. too bad all of life weren't like that, or rather, i had the ability to imagine the figurative metaphor. but this isn't me. i feel my way through my living, visualization isn't enough, i must feel the clean, the washing away of unwanted parts, see the dirt running from my body like cockaroaches from the light. you might say i'm a feeler. some people think their way through life. i'll bet the thinkers have a lot less scrapes and scratches and bruises, but then again, they probably have more headaches.

"today is the beginning of your new life". that line is supposed to make me feel better about being here, make me forget that i have absolutely no clue how i got here, or why i am cursed. it's not easy being surrounded by people all day and night, wanting to communicate with them, dying for it. but instead, they ignore you, call you dumb, can barely look at you. i hate people sometimes, i hate people for being so blind and so lazy and so damn afraid of me. afraid of me!? i might be missing a few parts, but i'm in no way missing a heart or a mind. i'm just alive as anyone else. i'm just as present. and perhaps this is the curse.

sometimes i try to hate God because i must live this horrid shred of a life. i try to hate Him because He won't let me die. it's not that uncommon of a wish to die, and it's not that difficult to do, but He won't do it. He tells me i should be thankful i was rescued, thankful that someone forced my catatonic fingers 'round a pen and taught me to write, thankful that i'm here, now, relieving some pressure from my mind. and i am thankful to my teachers, the ones brave enough to touch me, the ones strong enough to move my traumatized body to make words, to give me the ability to communicate. my God, it's a mad house in there, in this highly pressurized chamber of my mind.

but everyone suffers, i know because i feel them. and although i hate people but i can't help getting to know them. people trust you with so many secrets when you're mute. you could never tell, even if your body ached for it. yes, i could write it i suppose, but no one would believe me. i have only one arm and no nose. clearly i am a bad person, clearly i am deformed, clearly i should be avoided. unless of course you are on a bus and you just can't bare to keep it in anymore. you have AIDS. you look at me, now we are in this together. me and my disappearing face and you and your disappearing body.

most times i don't even let on that i can write. there's no point. no one asks me how i am doing, how i am feeling. i am a wall and you throw your sorrows against me. and i think i hate you, but even now, i cannot write it in a convincing stroke. i want to believe it to protect myself. why care for those that do not care for you? i am an outcast, yet i know the most about you. this is my madness. i feel too much. i cannot help it. i would like for someone to utter to me once, "thank you" or even, as impossible as it is, "i love you" and i would like to have the tongue to tell, just once, "you are welcome" and "i love you too".

the set-up: a true story

work in progress: this is the story of the day my parents and i were set-up while looking at used car.

we were looking at a mazda four door car. it was about the right price and the gentleman on the phone sounded older and asian. now, i try not to be prejudice but if i'm about to compliment an age group and an ethnicity, then that sort of makes being prejudice okay right? well, deal with it, i'm about to stereotype, (a little foreshadowing, the speaker will get what she deserves in this little tale of stereotyping and karma, so just hang tight). this gentleman had the soft, broken english voice of an older chinese man, which to me translated to: a good driver. let me explain. the elderly are a dicy group. they can either be wonderful drivers in the sense that they move quite slow and often don't leave the house and even when they do leave their homes, it's usually not during rush hour because they don't work. however, on the other hand, some elderly drivers are speeders, unable to properly gage how much pressure they are putting on the pedal (this isn't 'Nam, no one's going to get you if you're a bit slow), or perhaps they move too slow, afraid to be driving in this fast paced, maddening world. in addition, their eyesight is usually poor and their reaction time, well, let's just say a car doesn't turn quite the ol' horse and buggy used to. i was banking on this gentleman being like the former, a cautious, stay-at-home type. what encouraged me to this conclusion was his supposed ethnicity, Chinese. the asians know how to take care of things, i mean look at that rock wall they put up a while ago, the great wall of China, that thing has lasted...not like Berlin...but i digress again. the Chinese take pride in things they own, an ox, a chicken, a wife, a car. therefore, i concluded, this vehicle must be in good shape if a little, old, Chinese man is the owner.

when we arrived in downtown Hilo, the car was parked outside a demolition repair shop which, ironically, was fairly dilapidated. bad sign number one. however, since we drove an hour and a half to see this vehicle, i thought we should at least give it a shot. we walked around the car. it looked a bit run down, grime covering the body of the vehicle, but then again, i expected that from something quoted at under 2000.00. what was definitely more dirty than the vehicle was the suspicious specimen crossing the street next to us. perhaps we would not have noticed him if he wasn't staring so hard at us like some two-bit psychic trying to bend a spoon. furthermore, it appeared that this man hadn't seen a shower in sometime and considering that he came out of the bushes to cross the street only to re-enter into bushes on the other side, i felt like i was living the first couple minutes of a CSI episode. this man would be the harbinger for a set of ever queerer characters to enter this little story.

not more than thirty seconds passed since the bush man crossed the street, when we heard a slurring cry, "eh! eh! car!" except the 'r' wasn't really pronounced so it sounded like some loony bird was on the loose. "eh! eh! cah! cah!" and sure enough, it was one strange bird. a dented and rusted green mini van choked and huffed up to us. this vehicle looked like it had been involved in some extreme mini-van battles, a gladiator of the motor vehicle world, and it had lost, by a lot. the driver was in, if it can be believed, worse condition than the van. she stuck her head out the window, folds of skin cascading down her neck like layers of hot carmel on a carmel apple, and make-up so thick, she looked like a clown with two black eyes. she wore a low cut top that revealed too much of the wrinkled, spot covered pythons one may have called "boobs" about 15 years ago. "eh! you like da cah?" it took me a moment to process what she was saying, perhaps because i felt sucked into the vacuous space that was her wide open mouth. you see, teeth are the polite white picket fence guarding the cavernous opening of the mouth which ultimately leads to your mushy, personal insides. but this woman's fence, that is to say, her teeth, were mostly non-existent. perhaps they were taken by the state, in an effort to reclaim the entire real estate of her face which she had, in her time of obvious hard living, abused and failed to pay the proper taxes of acceptable social hygiene. whatever the case, there was one thing i was certain of, i felt dubious about this entire situation.

she repeated her question, "you like da cah?"
"yes, yes we want to look at the car" all this time i thought, "this woman does not look like what i imagined a little old Chinese man would look like".
"i selling dis cah for my boss".
"okay, well we want to test drive it" my dad chimed in.
"oh you like drive da cah?" i certainly wasn't to pay for something i didn't test drive which i assumed was fairly obvious.
"you follow me to my bosses house and we get da papahs"
"why don't we stay with the car?"
"i gotta get da key dat's why. you follow me to my bosses house. we get key, den drive cah".
i looked down at the woman's hands and she is clutching a bottle of pills. "we'll stay here and wait". bad sign number two.

the woman drove off and my dad turned to my mother and i and told us, "get in our truck, roll up the windows and lock the doors". to be honest, i usually find my dad to be overly paranoid and hostile, however seeing the woman's death grip on that bottle of pills, i could actually understand his concern. we were about to get into the car when we saw a medium sized black man crossing the street. now, let me pause here because i don't want to be conveyed as a racist; i am merely reporting the facts. this was a BLACK man. i know this because in Hawaii, especially on the Big Island, black people are like griffins, you don't see them everyday, and if you do see one, you take notice, it could be ten years before you see a different griffin. so when i say this man was black, i mean, he was black and what makes a black person stick out more than being compared to a griffin? expecting him to be Chinese. yes, this man, we found out was the owner of the elderly, Chinese man voice we heard on the phone a mere two hours ago. all my perceptions raced to me, each one smacking me like a overzealous nun at a Catholic school.

my dad signaled for us to get in the car and drive to a different location. he would stay and test drive the car. we left and parked around the corner. "i think we just got cased" my mother said. "a total set-up" i replied. even ashton kutcher couldn't be that convincing, rather, this was a real life scam. we sat thinking through the whole scene. of course someone would case a used car. people come with cash on hand all the time for these sorts of deals. it's expected. i had cash on hand. i started to wonder about my dad and this man. we had tried to call the seller when we first arrived and he said he would be over in five minutes. only after the woman in the mini-van left did he suddenly come walking across the street from the same area as the gawking man who came out of the bushes.

as i was processing all this, we saw dad walk up to the truck. "let's go" he said.
"so i'm guessing it's a no go with that car"
"that whole thing just really creeped me out"
"yeah, i think it was a set-up"
his voice elevated, "hell yeah it was a set up. i tried to get out of the car and found out that the driver side door was locked. i couldn't unlock it. you can only unlock it from the outside. i was stuck in there. the seller had to get out and unlock the door for me". he paused, "i mean, what kind of car unlocks only from the outside?"
we looked at each other. bad sign number three.

open palm resistance

an open palm resistance
flush to my cheek
do i rejoice or weep?
when you put yourself here
what do you mean?
how do you mean?
this presence on my face
this hand gripped 'round my heart
are you holding
or are you holding?
who can explain
an open palm resistance?
then again,
who can explain you?

december 1...a proclamation

december is here once again. i find myself, like many others, raising my hands and shoulders asking the timeless question, "where did the time go?" how silly. like i could have conserved it, like i could have shaved a few seconds here and stored up a few seconds there and somehow stopped the rotation of the world and the revolution of our existence. how silly. and yet, i look at the calender, flip up another page to reveal a wintery landscape that has no actual relevance to Hawaii, but whose white symbolism tells me another year is fading out into untraceable light. gone. and how? and how.

i've got plans for december and i am reclaiming the end. i will not wait for january to begin again. it starts today. december 1st. each day, a new blog entry. i feel like a giddy young girl in her first week of her first relationship. isn't it grand? isn't it beautiful? isn't writing perfect? i smile, my metaphorical dimples filling with sunlight steeped in ignorance. but there you have it. i'm admitting it to the world (or, at least, whoever reads this blog) that i am a writer and i will be a better one yet. i'm in this for the long haul. til death do us part.

loosening the knot

my finger nails are much too long. i lodge the tip of my tongue underneath one. this comformts me, surrounded in tightness by my own hardened, calcium mass. i feel the pressure of this thin edge confronting the thick and morphing muscle of my tongue. "what does a tongue know about survival?" my finger nail quips. "a tongue which is nothing more than a pompous romeo, making love to language, day in and day out, and calling these flicks and rolls and musclely miming of meaning a purpose!" i meet the pressure of the fingernail with more pressure from my tongue. both have a purpose, though so seemingly different they are in apparence and apparent function. and yet, how nicely they fit, the perfect amount of tension such that the tongue is contained as it ought not to be and the fingernail, lifted up is taken from it's security like it ought not to be. and so, i begin to slowly and deliberately open myself up.

i can parse myself into the tiniest pieces, smaller even than the atom. i can stack my thoughts like the most elegant glass beads, each sphere, cell-like and diaphanous, complicated only by the flush of self consciousness, anger, regret, pride and above all, love. i string myself along a line imperceptible such that when you look at me, truly look at me, you'll think i'm nothing more than a mass of colorful beads, spilling over myself and recollecting as best i can. you might even mistake me for waterdroplets silenced and shaped into a figure somewhat resembling a person. and perhaps you are correct. i am many pieces and yet i am one. how can this be? most days i am one. shedding light as i go, i sweat colors and feelings and impacts that often no one sees, the shine of my beads pass with their reflections. these days i am many pieces but i only notice that i am one. but when i get to thinking about myself, i start to loosen the knot. this awareness is something i like to call the hiccup in the cataclsym. i like staying in this place, turning over each bead of myself and thinking, "now isn't that one exotic?" how strangely magical the self can be.

and in the magical there is the mystery. the mystery for me has always been love. perhaps this is the case for most people but i don't dare speak for the masses. to me, love IS the cataclysm, the powerful surge that sends the beads of my being flying across the vast realm of logic, colors and emotions flung everywhere like the artwork of a toddler. forget the many pieces idea, i am only one. one post waiting for it's bird. forget the calm introspection. surely love is the cataclysm of the heart.