Becky's Achive

3/26/01

Like a shadowy moth, he hums toward the light.

Dim, rusty old gears shifting slowly in his brain,

Sending the signals tiredly down to his feebley propelling limbs.

Muttering under his scrubby white beard,

He opens the refrigerator now, grunting and peering in,

His mouth open,

Bearing his mottled old teeth in a grimace of perplexed bewilderment

As he studies the contents of the fridge for some elusive thing,

All the mis-matched containers and foil-wrapped objects huddling

In layers, their mysterious and doubious identities mocking him.

He sighs, an exhasperated wind shuddering

In the last leaves of an oak before winter,

Then shuts the door, picking up his cane, its gray metal and rubber

A third appendage to him, and heads ponderouly back to his lair

In the living room, his green faux leather easy chair

Shaped to his body like a second skin.

He mutters plaintively under his breath to his tiny Chihuahua

Scittering at his feet, rolling her liquid eyes.

"I don't know Tink, I just don't know."

3/24/01

My back hurts, and I'm tired enough to just not care.

I saw Save The Last Dance tonight, and now

My disillusioned hopes sit in my lap like puppies,

Sighing softly, their limpid brown eyes staring into mine.

There is a perfect man. A perfect, perfect man.

I've found him.

And he's fictional.

Surprise, surprise.

You didn't really expect to see him walk up your driveway one day,

Did you?

Swinging steps, and soft hands

Sweet words that mean the world.

Actually, some days I do expect to see him

Coming across the bare brown fields behind my house,

Whistling.

The wind sighs outside,

And I'm trapped at a computer.

No one here is perfect.

No one here knows how to hip-hop.

Not even me, though I try and try in front of my mirror

On the way to the kitchen, my hips curving and my knees bending

Hands and shoulders pulsing like a heartbeat.

Everyone here is just so damn human.

But maybe that's for the best, when you think about it.

Because with humans, there are always mysteries.

And how deep does a fictional character run?

Only as far as his lines. Then he stops.

Sometimes real life is just more interesting than fiction.

Just not always.

Expectations brimming

Possibilities spilling their endless

Slithering contents on my kitchen table.

Sitting recklessly,

Reading my problems like the tarot,

Defining meaning from things that have been defined

And re-defined by so many people before me,

Damn, if they couldn't find the answers, why should I?

It almost hurts to think about it.

But why not give it a try?

I'm so tired.

I'm so discouraged.

I just want all the good things to be true,

And all the bad things to vanish like fog on a summer morning.

Leaving my sky blue and clear as your eyes.

Don't bring your problems to my doorstep and leave them there.

Please.

Covered with a neat little checkered cloth.

It doesn't make them prettier.

And I've got so many of my own.

If you offer me the good with the bad,

I'll take you up on it faster than you can blink,

Faster than I'd ever admit.

But just,

Please...

No more hurts.

No more pettiness.

Just give me a hug

And let bygones be bygones.

Dense night harkening to my call.

Twisted leaves of winter, laying matted and deranged on the ground.

It only takes one good person to change the world for the better;

And only one bad person to change the world for the worse.

These thoughts sleep silent inside my head as I step out the door,

The light from the porch wraps around my shoulders like a glowing

Cocoon,

As I jump down the old stairs, and into the night.

Don't tempt me too much,

I wander easilly.

Like a stray cat, I wind my way down alleyways, looking for

A handout, a warm lap

Something to harbor me from the prying eyes of the night.

Like a stray cat, needy

Affection is water in my seive,

Spilling out and wetting the dust under my aching feet.

I'd like to be owned.

In a non-overbearing type of way.

If something like that actually exists.

I want someone to come home to at night

In my own little house with the warm little light

In the window.

I want you to rub my back and kiss me, without my asking.

When we sleep, like kittens, curling arms and legs around each other,

Purring in our sleep

I want to be in your dreams.

I want to wake in the morning, and be able to look into your eyes

And not feel watched

Only trusted

Completely.

Tin soldier you are,

Clanking up the stairs without a heart.

I'm not your cat, although I sleep on your bed,

Your fingers stroking my fur,

But only in the night.

So I'm not really yours

And don't know if I want to be anyway.

But all I'm saying is

I wander easilly.

So be forwarned.

3/13/01

Crazy blue lightning striking

Enlightening where it hits

Blistering grass and stinging trees.

Red withered roses

Sitting in a vase in somebody's forgotten attic.

Emancipated by fire.

3/13/01 written when I was in a really weird and goofy mood

You come along the conveyor belt

Sitting smugly in a box,

Pre-packaged and ready for digestion.

Where are you going? Oh where?

And why do you goest?

Who made thee?

And pray tell, O Bolgna, what art thou made of?

And if I ingest thee,

Is a swift and horrible death

A guarantee?

Standing In The Dark

So it wasn't as bad as you thought. Slump-shouldered, queasy-stomached teenage anxiety running insane. But it could have gone oh so much better. Why has no Prince Charming come yet to sweep me off my feet? Hell, why hasn't even one single, solitary, half-assed, hormonal boy tried to talk to me? Is there something in me that is beautiful only to Quakers and Unschoolers? Something that all the others fail to see, and wouldn't even care if they saw? I don't know. I don't pretend to know. But this feeling inside of me, feeling so deep and raw that by now it's like in inner welt, something I finger and touch and can never quite leave alone, this feeling tells me I'll never, never meet anyone. I'll never do what I was meant for, what I've dreamed of. But I refuse to accept that version of my fate, flat out refuse. I'm Becky, and I don't give up. And you can play your music, you and your stylish, hip, high-caste band. I know you'll never look at me, you've scoffed at me so often in the past, but I still wish for your approval now and again. Yeah, I'm standing in the dark, pounding, blaring, rough-edged music numbing my eardrums, racing my heart. I look around at the boys, so close and yet as unattainable as manaquins on display behind glass. And standing in the dark, wondering if all my future will be like this, and will never, never yield the kind of experiences I want out of life, I die a little. Die a little so that I can live.

2/1/01

Happiness finds me like a panther in the night, As unwitting, I walk the walk of melencholy day by day. Like a panther, it springs from the jungle trail and leaps upon me, and I am overcome by Joy. "Yes!!" I shriek, holding the letter to my chest, and leap up and down around my cluttered room as if I posses a hidden pogo stick. Oh to love and be loved. To give and have given. To sing and rejoice. A bird now, I spread my wings and fly out the window. The glass never existed except in my mind. And look at all the time I've spent devising ways to get around it, over it, under it...when it was never there at all. Out in the cold, harsh air I soar. I'm realizing my dreams. I'm taking life by the hand and running, flying with it. The cage of my mind, prison of my house, is feeble now. It cannot contain my happiness. For it has grown strong on my insecurities, absorbing them like a sponge to cast back in my face. It has grown fat off my lonliness, and thrived in the darkness of my misery. But this piercing, ringing happiness shatters it like glass, and so through this glass I fly. Fly like a wild-winged bird on a flight of keening joy.

Pyromaniac

1/27/01

Standing arms upraised, I torch the streets, The little houses huddled Beneath their sheets. I blow the fire high, Up into the blackened sky. And for all of us, I die. Whispering flames, speak to my dead ears. Birds of prey visiting the stars. And let no mortal embrace you with bars. Pyromaniac burning bright, in the torments of the night. Keep from me those eyes that shine, That mind that blazes bright, For one brilliant second, Before it's consumed by the night.

Vinyl City

2/15/01

I'm going tonight, going to the slick city streets, the black-leather coated Friday night crowd with their pretentions on their sleeve. High heels click, clicking, walking in the neon night, fear and excitment pummelling my chest; looking for the door, the door I'm supposed to go through. She's by my side. Blonde hair, out of place smile. I don't know where she fits into this anymore than I know where I fit in. We're orphans, two lost children of the night. Pitch black alley, wine colored music drifting out through the lights and into the street. We pass the shops, bars and clubs, swing uneasilly around the massing, swirling hoardes, the whirlpools of humanity thronging and frothing us onward. Turn the corner, down the night-shrouded sidewalk, breath a fog in front of us, ears ringing slightly at the sudden quiet. Then there it is. We stop, look, thoughts fleeting briefly through our minds. Thoughts of ruin or of victory, I cannot say. Then it's up three concrete steps, and out of the frying pan into the fire.

Longing For Spring

2/12/01

Cold of winter, seeps into my blood and stills my beating heart. Out in the frozen field I lay, face exposed, upraised to the exquisite, fluttering snowflakes. I wait, a human sacrifice, for spring to thaw my blood and make me live once more. I hear the earth stirring under the thin-veiled sheets of ice, deep winter blankets of snow. I hear the earth murmurring in her sleep, her dreams filled with bright flowers in sunny fields. Encased in the drifting gray sky, closing around the winter land like an eggshell, waiting with baited breath for the sun to finally shatter this icy prison and warm the land. Made of snow, with only my cherry-red, beating heart alive and warm, I walk on clouds to the forest stream, where the water runs like ice, like my stumbling blood, over the pebbles, the fallen rocks. All is rimmed in ice, but here and there the vivid green of watercress despells all this somber sleep and speaks the word of life in it's high and piping voice. Sitting in a tree to overlook the snowy valley, held beneath the numbing sky, I dream the petulant dreams of summer, even though they seem but a mirage in this world of white and gray. Over the death-colored hills a bird stirs and flies. And I await, longing for spring, and the dreamy, warm blue skies.

1/28/01

Gravel voiced wonder, Deep in my heart of hearts. I'll call you one day, when the time is right. But for now, go play in your meadow, Lord knows the grass will be covered under snow in just a few more hours. Tear away the tears, Wipe the ashen slate clean. Don't listen to me, I'm just the bird inside your head, The voice of lilting insanity, Driving you closer to the brink Of Destiny. And you never ask, always tell; Always spilling your weary fantasies On even more weary ears. Careless, careless love. Why do I seek you out? And why am I up against a brick wall That never fades? On and on until infinity, I keep seeing your back, proceding away from me, Until your gray shirt is lost to me In the transient mists of time.

1/23/01

Nothing is perfect, As striated clouds of reason part over my shifting head. Down in the aching valley, Sky so blue of morning. I keep calling for you, Even though I know it's hopeless now.

Tidal waters come and go. I am not alone on this island, As I've thought before; But a prisoner. A prisoner of Love.

So at night we beat the drums, Only to awake at dawn, Alone and cold, Picking up seashells By ourselves.

Don't drink the water. You've read about it in books all your life, But nothing prepared you for this. I sold my soul to the garbage man, And he can't even give me the time of day.

Grinding wheel of promiscuity, Always hanging above me. But my pen keeps bravely writing; Bravely spilling it's blood. It knows it's going to die, but keeps on speaking.

Soft sunset of colors. Or is it a sunrise? East is my direction, Rain is my color, The lake is my mirror. And if I never get up again, At least you'll be here.

        
             -The State of Perpetual Confusion- (1/20/01)

"What state do you live in?" "Me? Why, I'm in the state of Perpetual Confusion." It's not bad here. Not nice either of course. Nothing is fixed, everything is blurry and undefined, and just as you think you might have grasped the meaning of it all, you find out that you've got it entirely wrong from the beginning. Relationships here are strange, unhealthy affairs. The people involved usually just end up dumping each other in a matter of weeks because everything is so, well...confusing. My friends, (the few I've managed to have, since they're always so confused) complain about how they can never figure out what their partners are doing with the relationship, let alone WHY they're doing it. It seems that the other person involved usually feels the same way as my friends about the whole thing, but their lines of communication are too botched for them to realize that they actually agree. I never hear the end of it. "He called me the other day and asked me out after I hadn't heard from him in weeks. I thought we were through." "I thought she liked me, but when I called her up a couple of weeks after our first date, she sounded like she hated my guts." Yes, here in Confusion, everything is just one big mind game. I'm seriously considering moving. I have a friend in another state. He says it's lovely there, once you get used to it. Whatever that means. Maybe I'll move there. They call it Denial.

                 -Long Distance Friends- (1/14/01)

People look at me funny when I say that I travel hundreds of miles to see my friends. That yes, as a matter of fact, I've been to three different states in the past three weeks just for that express purpose. People look at me funny, and I can see the silent, half-formed questions behind their eyes: "Drugs?" "Alcohol?" "Promiscuous sex?" "Reckless teenage rebellion?" And with growing indignation... "Her parents stand back and let her DO this?" People look at me funny when I say that my best friends live scattered all across the country, hell, several countries, and that yes, I met most of them at a camp I went to last summer. I think I see jealousy in these people's eyes. I mean, wouldn't it be nice if THEY weren't in their 40's, tied down with a job and kids? If THEY had multiple best friends? 100's of them? And they could just take off, anytime they wanted, providing they had a little money, to travel all over the country, the globe, to spend time with these lovely people? I just smile sweetly at them as they stare at me in bewilderment, as they search in vain for an appropriate question to ask me; one other than the ones crossing their minds. I just smile sweetly, defying their expectations, my expression serene, and say "Yup, gotta love friends."

                          -Santa Barbara- (1/04/01)

Angelical city of postcards. There is magic in your bones, I know it. You stir me as no other place has ever stirred my soul before. I cannot believe you exist, this city is a fairytale, but a fairytale that I never knew existed. I woke up in the cold, dim, morning house, and looked outside, out the white door. The hills stretched up to the sky, the tiny white houses with their tiled roofs peeking like mushrooms from the starkly beautiful green and brown of the hills. The palm trees, the warmth, the vibrant sweet fruits and flowers, the scaley, fluttery Eucaliptis, the twisting, spreading, sharp edged trees. They hold my fluttering heart captive. I feel the years of this place, I feel the people who have lived plush, succulent lives, alone in their Eden; native to their soil for as long as their ancestors can remember; at one with nature. I feel the people who came in their armour, the thought of gold ringing in their blood, conquering the people they found, spreading sickness, the blood they spilled staining these hills with something almost intangible, but that will last forever, an invisible spector. I feel the hippies, the beat that drove them here, the psychedelic twist of this land that lent itself so easilly to drugs, to surfing, passion, and rock 'n' roll, like a cat that curls up in the warm sun of a window. California, the land of dreams, lucid magic, call of something you can't quite understand but must follow. Insanity. This land holds a promise, a promise it has whispered in the willing ears of these people for countless centuries. This land split by earthquakes, baked in the tawny sun, twisted by greed, the golden lust that seems to be this land's fate. But will it accept me? Does it ever accept those who come? Girl from land of snow and ice, girl from land of forests wild. Girl transported, spirit bright, to a land of sunshine mild. Keep me, hold me in this land. Bury my roots deep, Deep in golden sand.

                            -Jealous- (12/30/00)

Jealousy is a funny thing, you think it's gone until it stings. I feel like you should be true to me, that's how I really want you to be. But that's just bullshit, you've got no attatchment, not to me. I hate to think of you with her. Or her, or her, for that matter. But you're a free man in a free country of free love, why should I expect some miracle from above? And I can imagine when you walk through that door, your blond head a halo, that cold seeping through my heart, plastering that fake smile on. Fuck, I'm not going to compete for you with her, you picked her. You didn't pick me. It was the other way around actually. And no, I WON'T tell you how I feel. I know it's childish, stupid, but I think you have an idea, and I don't want to give you any more, because if I do, I might get hurt even more. I might shatter like the thin skim of ice over a winter pond. I'll just bare it, I won't try to seperate you two. Why bother? I never seem to get picked first. Would I like you as much if you weren't so sought out, so coveted? Would I like you so much if you didn't make me jealous? Stone cold, iron hot Jealous.

Dirty Hair

Dirty hair, clings between my fingers like yesterday's shards of hope. Like old, windblown leaves on the yard. Your head, sleeping in peach orchards far away, I hold in my lap. Your breath could be a butterfly against my fluttering wrist. Dirty hair clings to your rosey, dreaming head. Unwashed, I stroke it's soft, limp, brownness, letting it slip and stay where it will. I try to brush away the memories, more poignant than time itself.

Love

                                I.

Mistrust and anger boil. Lust slowly uncoils. Heat and hate lead to debate, but always to trust's denial. You kiss, tongue slim and slimy pink, into the regions of my soul. But I am wearing armour, newly fitted steel armour, and I will never let you in. For you've broken the beauty of my trust, my innocence, like a child. I wander sobbing like a bleeding heart, along the good old railroad tracks. The gleaming ties stretch to infinity; they must mean something, but who knows what? The gravel bites into my feet, but no more than you've bitten into my heart.

                                II.

My heart is like an overripe apple, hanging plush in this evening light. It wants to fall so badly into tender hands. To feel caresses soft upon it's ruby skin. My heart is soft and easilly bruised. The passing days may leave their scars, but also leave me sweeter. I ripen in the August sun, inside my freckles, my brazen words. I wait with the heartbeat of a dove, for the being of sweet music, that thing called love.

Distress At Sea

Way hey and up she rises! Way hey and up she rises! Way hey and up she rises, early in the morning. Morning of fog, inaudible chanty of the sea. It seems to be something directly connected with the restless, menacing toss and plunge of the waves. My feet, peppered with sand, shining blue toenails of mermaids. I'm so cold. The wild wash of the sea calls me, and I run to it like a lemming, heart writhing back to the source of life from whence I sprung. Our legs run aching across the sand, my heart tossing like the waves to see your gaze linger on Her. I stay high on the doons, away from the driftwood, the melencholy that seems inherrently a part of the sea. The grass I braid turns long and golden, and when it's time, I run down from the dunes to my people. My people of the sand. "Long time no see." You say. You've run to me as though you longed to sweep me off my feet, but now you're ackward as you hug me gingerly. I tie the grass around your neck, any excuse just to touch you, to claim some part of you for my own. You say you'll wear it forever, or until it falls off. My heart swells like the chanty I can almost hear, beneth the pounding waves.

A Plant of Slow Growth

I'm so flat at times, so two dimentional it sickens me. I get stuck. I don't mean to be that way, God, just the opposite, but it's like there's a little door that shuts in my mind, a door that shuts out my deep, multicolored, mixing, conflicting emotional personality. I become one color, say orange. I get scared. I'm sure that everyone can see how flat and boring and uninteresting I'm being. I'm sure that they're thinking "Wow, she sure isn't as intelligent and unique as I thought she was. I guess I'll never have a deep, psychological, philisophical discussion with her. Better go talk to someone else before I waste any more of my time on this mediocre person."

The trouble isn't that I think I lack depth, but that people don't see my depth. Whether or not this is actually true, I've failed as yet to ascertain. One thing I know for certain though, is that I am thouroughly and completely sick of people who expect to get to know you (or at least the better part of you) inside and out in a matter of days. (Although a matter of hours is even better!) And if you haven't bared the inside of your soul to them in this mind-bogglingly brief period, or you haven't shown any unsurpassed talents, charms, or emotional beauty and general endearingness to them, then you are to be passed off as "nice", and perhaps "sweet", and put on the back burner, written to only sparingly, (or not at all) and never to be gossipped interestingly about, crushed on, speculated over, and last but not least, mentioned in Truth or Dare games.

So I'm sorry if I don't delight you by opening up like a jack-in-the-box and showering you with all my inner quirks and secrets in one clean shot, so that we can quickly get over any initial ackwardness and get on to the good stuff.

Who ever said that "friendship is a plant of slow growth"? It was George Washington, but who listens to him? He's dead anyway.

So I suppose I'll go on living in my flat 2-D way, until they start making people who don't care if it takes you awhile to open up. Until they make people who like learning only a few secrets at a time, and are good at keeping them.

Or maybe I'm not the 2-dimentional one at all. Maybe everyone else is. Or maybe it just takes awhile for people to all get to the same dimention.

After all, friendship, as are many other things, a plant of slow growth.

Amen!

I have a friend who is not the person I want her to be. We've grown apart from our initial closeness, we were once two baby birds in a nest, now we are strangers. I hold memories of her from long ago, before we fought, before her spite and lies. This time lies golden in my mind's eye, as though it were a perfect time, when in fact, it wasn't. My friend who is not my friend who was once my friend. I want her back, but how do I know that she won't betray me again? Her hair is golden brown like a lion's mane; she's pretty in a way I dream of being. Her eyes are huge and brown like the eyes of the cows on her family's farm. We used to run together in the fields and play endless games, which are long forgotten now. We were children once, but now we've wandered.

Drain

Drain...My life slipping away, tumbling over the brink of time. Leaving me no time to think, only to feel. No semblance of reason, only the shards of guilt left by summer's adventures, autumns's fufilment's, and winter's weary fantasies. Drain...Like the hole in my soul. My mind recoils from the overpowering debt, the loss, when I have so much to regain. What do I mean? This person who longs to be, aching over the mumblings of her pen in the middle of the night. My writing is like blood, powerful, life giving, incohearant tide. What is slowly disolving you? The page asks, and I ache to scream and rant my complaints on and on into the blank maw of cyberspace. But what right have I to complain? My life will get better. Won't it? I can almost see it there...Hope, just over the horizon. So I try not to complain. If only I wasn't being sucked down this drain.

                           -Surfacing- (a song)

And then sometimes I feel, Feel like my soul's just slipping, Slipping so low down That it'll never surface again. And those people's eyes just bore, So cold, so low down, right to the bottom of my soul. Surfacing up from the bottom, Bottom Lord, of a deep, deep hole And I'll never come up for air. Glass marbles melt my eyes and cry the tears I'll never shed. Brave, brave people tell their souls before they know them themselves. Am I pretty then? Tell me true. Because I alone know the truth. I drown in my own misery, my complaints. Damn you, you voice in my head, the one who really hates me. I want to write a song. I want to sing a song. I don't want to drown in this cold, cold death. I'm surfacing.