in which i write and you read. ja? sounds good to me.
3.29.02 (i might be in love, but thank the lord, i can write again.) i cling to you the way i bite my lip holding on til it hurts. i don't think i'll stay whole if you leave again. your breath on my hand like the window was opened and i could stare at the moon. breathing calm. tonight's only peaceful comfort. bus stops. transitions and when will my stomach settle? always on the go but i am afraid of the changes that honesty brings. but you hold me my ragged breath caught between the weave of your shirt my toes sinking through my boots and no. i couldn't look at you. my heart was busy creeping naked across my eyes. all i want is to hold you until you wake up and after. with a friend the moon flings love and these dreams leave early. throw shadows dark and warm march with a friend feel deeply gentle hurry and begin, love. don't leave ever. me and the moon feel dark. winter breath blows here. his love - chill wind. remember this moon. me and him ask why - odd week. moon as balm wind sun sky don't leave yet. 12. 17.01 hear the long, high wail that is my confidence being squeezed like an old birthday balloon. sighing like the one candle left over on a frosted cake. i know i'll never get my wish. but you run me over like a derailed train of thought and i am slammed and broken you are the one person i would protect against the sharpest weapons the one person who i would love no matter what. you've tested my devotion, you've made me walk across the coals of hell barefoot but i'm still limping by your side, trying to hold you up. i never meant to question your value. i didn't mean to make your confidence shatter. i am hanging on to the hope that this means you care about my opinion clinging to the belief that one day our conversations won't teeter like a kid new on wheels ready to skate off of the surface of the conversation. i deflate when i hear that their compliments mean more but i am the only person who can make you feel bad. i want to be the person who makes you want to love life to bring you round when the world is down. and all i do is bruise your conscience. you are reacting to everything in the opposite way that i meant you to and i don't know which is better. i guess i'll just keep limping flinching at every bitter comment. and trying to remember that you are worth more than a layer of skin. 9.24.01 our joy knows the way fingers can freeze the way you can just sit for minutes, hours without a single word escaping like a little sigh and i sigh when i think of the joy i used to equate with you but now our joy knows silence, and not the good connecting kind. our joy is quiet and sometimes it has to pinch itself to see if it still exists. celebrating you you deserve banners. ice cream and cake. speeches. a parade. something fun and wholesome not just drinking games. you deserve more than teasing. you should have the world, if you wanted it more than what you can see out of the webcam's view smoke fills my throat and i think you should have every kind of wish a candle could give you and i would tell everyone watching to sing loudly and celebrate you. will you come walk with me? just down the path a little sit on a blanket we know that grass scratches even when it looks oh so soft and wavy we are natives to these hills and know that despite the view from the car window it's better to just stay inside where we can drive through our lives stay safe and unscratched. do you think i am imagining it all? i remember you making animal sounds and giggling we dressed up in shawls and bonnets we played star trek in your garage. we scampered over rocks and squirted each other with water guns dreaming of our future. they would be married, she would die young we would be godmothers to all of their children. was i imagining it then too? because suddenly your future has taken on such a different slant than what we planned and no matter how hard i try i can't reconcile my image of the little girl hiding candy under her bed, petting her cats, yelling at her brother, with the girl i see today talking about things i never thought you'd touch. whispering my love dreams. my hopes, i miss the way butterflies fill up your stomach till you think you might hit your head on the cieling. there is nothing wrong with me right now, this moment. but i can't even write a love poem. (and now i think there's something wrong.) in the dark places i want to sit curling like smoke around a journal and a pen. to be a jumping shadow black hair and smooth rocks the air smells charred today my throat hurts and the light is too bright. i want you to be water dripping from the cave for thousands of years i want to be the one who discovers the secret little passage that leads me to you. i want to be the echo that makes you quiver perilously. trembling at the edge, i could be caught underground forever and never wish for light. to kiss life softly like everyone's skin is as smooth as a rose petal like every flower ends in he loves me. i would hold your hand explore dance devour get drunk on dandelion wine and make sure that thorns never prick me. am i sad? wind blows smoke across my eyes metal blinds clang and i can hear the hum of suburban living. tasting ashes on my tongue i would lick my words off of the page if i thought they'd be sweeter. i'll tell you what it's like to live it's bouncing off of the cieling only to hit the floor. bouncing off the walls between that absorbing every bit of color and laughing loudly. eat every peach and try not to choke while litter shines like diamonds and oil makes rainbows in water. drive fast, dance away look back less than you look forward be hurt hurt less and be exhilirated while you're flying to the cieling. drink my melted smiles collect my fragmented laughs piece them back together as disjointed as before. i am good for a giggle or two, late night giddiness poetry afterwards, and not much else. truth oozing gorgeous pain i hide myself behind a computer screen and wish you were more forthcoming. has there ever been someone more honest? i put my life here for you to read and save and print and examine wishing that pain was the lie and who knows maybe it is maybe i need to examine my own pillow every time i dream. laugh fool you know there's nothing else to do. laugh and laugh until the bitter dance swirls away like peppermint is that sweet enough for you? stare like a knife and try to cut through the wall inside of you laugh until the tears come and you can't see them. problem solved. easy to say all of this, it's easy to let your fingers take over. it's easy to write about the way your head is stuffed, how the wind is too dry and you can't swallow away the feeling inside. how ani is playing mellow and you are wanting it to rain again. it almost feels like cheating, but the real test comes later. never easy i loved you in spring rains. i loved you through lightning i loved you during thunder. i loved you while my stomach was cut up while my throat ached and while my eyes burnt holes through walls and doors i loved you while i sent tornadoes to pick up your house and bring it to me, loved you while i cursed every inch seperating us loved you past the distance i loved you when you sent a drought, when you breathed in smog and my head pounded, while you slammed doors and heavy winds to blow me over. loving you was easy never. together felt like worship i have never been more thankful never been more ready to bow down at an altar and sacrifice myself to the gods in charge of maintaining this bliss. i could pray every night for your arms, for your hair, for the couch, for the field, your guitar, your food, your smile, your voice and never pray enough. 'i miss you' has too few words to get across the intensity of longing for your sanctuary. blind kiss to the one that smells like oranges rotting left behind on an empty seat on the train i remember little scratchy things about you but not the overall softness that i wrote about then. it gets dark so early now and all i can think about is how warm you were after the sun went down. left over woman with secret blazes she tries to be so obvious that no one will guess the truth. how hurt she gets, how hard it is to be the one on the other side and how much it aches when she knows she has to reconcile herself to being shadowed, always. written in a poetry marathon with Marina 8.9.01 practically speaking this is just the alphabet arranged on paper to make something that we can then read aloud. practically speaking of course, is not the way to speak of poetry. it does not account for my hands shaking with nervous agitation when i leave the pen on the ground and ignore the papers stark and whiteness. practically speaking, letters on a page should not control me but practically is not the way to speak of poetry. sure that something will come out of my pen, i'm sure that if i hold my pen to paper words will come. easily. Too, sometimes, too easy like cheating. i steal lines from the songs that make me ache and it's all give and take, borrowing your pain renting out my journal to your inspiration i steal your lines. it's easy so easy like keeping your eyes open when you kiss you can see better but where's the romance? cheating cast under a light like the bright page my pen only needs a hand to hold it i just open my mind and words dribble down my arm it's like cheating, so easy and i'm always sure that something will turn out. you feel every touch as light. and you are grateful that you can touch my energy and you say be glad that you are sensitive. be glad that you feel. because it is better to writhe in agony than to have a face set in stone. i think your eyes know the pain of my arms and we both have hurt just to feel and afterwards when we realize we are okay we are swept into an ocean of relief so big it makes our scars look miniscule and you say be glad that you can still be swept away like this be glad that it hurts when you inhale water because that mean the air that you breathe afterwards is 20 times sweeter and youc an taste it on your tongue so be glad you feel even when your tongue gets burnt. laugh breathlessly until you notice you're shaking too hard. after you've laughed everything away play the xylophone on the old bones that remain, dance on the dug up graves of old crushes of memories of course of photographs and the people who once made you laugh so hard. it sends chills down your spine now, as you spin away trying not to see the words inscribed on teh stones, you spin away the live ones make you laugh and laugh like you could laugh away your entire life... falling down like the london bridge moved to arizona, i think. maybe it got tired of the fog, or the accents makbe the london bridge needed to get some sun. the london bridge is transplanted to a different soil and i wonder what has taken it's place? falling down maybe i need to breathe a different kind of air maybe i should move to arizona and the london bridge and i can work on standing strong together. at least the thoughts have not been aged, into the stiff lines of PRACTICAL at least i'm free to blush when i want to even if you didn't say anything special at least you go along with this fun make believe and don't ask me to chain myself to reality. at least you, like me, enjoy pretending that hope still has wings. truth without knowing what lies are. but somehow we talk so fast and it all gets straightened out but the time we have to recall who's memories are who's. we just shifted away two pairs of footprints in two different directions we just disengaged ourselves and the world, which had momentarily halted, resumed it's course. being left alone is no longer the terrifying experience it once was. and although i'm getting used to dial tones and the sound of a car leaving the driveway, or a bus pulling away i still have to talk twice as loud to fill the silence. wanting to talk but i have no more words to stuff in my mouth like a cake crumbling down my front. i have your eyes and i don't want to see them ashamed or scornful so i will dine alone, again, tonight and make a meal out of what i never told you. swallowing the bitter tastes. happy mediumyou are so used to the freezing water that you don't recognize the sun till it makes you burn. i can tell you're being consumed
i can tell when the conversation
is a hefty one
sitting on your shoulder,
crouched low,
like a jockety
ready to kick you in the side
Race you to the finish line
last one there is a
rotten
stinking
no good
egg. Last one there
buys our tickets to
hell and beyond
where we consume each
other in dramas that
extend through commercial
breaks,
in dramas that singe the
curtain.
we consume
firewaterairpeople
like cheap champagne
and as it
bubbles down our throats
our laughter gets harsh
and we stretch out our arms
ready to consume
the world waiting for us at
the finish line.
something has to melt
soon, inside me
because i am
a glacier on fire.
i am looking for sinking sailors
and i am looking
to help them drown.
i am wanting
to disperse into something
greater than me
to sink
into something
lukewarm.
i am tired of freezing
and burning, of swimming or flying
i'm ready
for a rescue boat
where i can sit
and melt and not think about
our contradictions.
i'm ready to leave it all behind constantly thinking about the next departure. i'm ready to capture all of my loneliness in a postcard and send it away. i'm ready to fall in love with a love stronger than a postage stamp or a love that sends me thick letters. i'm ready to set out to deliver you myself. i'm ready to leave old letters in old boxes growing older and older while i visit tourist traps and show up on your porch myself. because i won't let you
Rest In Peace
i rest
in pieces.
too much talk of cold and death
let me bury you
beneath my pillow
and let my dreams
turn out to be more than ashes
or else tell me
that you are alive
and that you are enjoying
the simple act of breathing but
your dreams have been
startling and you hope
i am well.
your dreams slowly approach you and you shrink away like darkness from a flashlight i don't want to see whose faces are the ones haunting me and i'd reather just dream at night, rather than let them invade my day because some things are easier to endure when you're expecting them and others are far more comforting if they have no chance of coming true. reach out for something i can touch something gritty and textured and real something memorable that connects through my skin to my mind to my heart something with claws that latches on to me and snags my sweater like a song that sticks or choking on an overlooked shard of bone. holding on just gives you sore muscles and the one you're holding onto the urge to run away. she felt that the weight of caring had been lifted from her as she sat as content as a pineapple milkshake and settled into her own sweetness. thinkgs are not that simple so when you stumble across an unlikely happy mediyum don't questions the complexities that surround it. she turned her head to laugh because there wasn't anything else she'd rather do. she wonders why she needs tears to soften her face why she needs to smile to make sure it's still elastic why she needs to talk to make sure her voice still works to make sure you haven't captured her essence in a shell that you wear around your neck. (but i think her friends would be able to tell the difference between her laugh and yours) i like the color red. but it doesn't hold a single memory and so i toss it out the window with green, with yellow, blue and white sit by my side in places of honor and brown stands behind me, it's hands resting on my shoulders. my colors are deepening and even though i like the color red i'm not up to the excitement it brings the thrills i just want a long night to settle back and be in love. these were written on june 7th, but i just found them again. wrapped tightly in a sweater that scratches i look to you for comfort and laughter. you are unconcerned and grinning tomorrow comes with no regrets and nothing i can say can shorten the miles or lengthen the night. so i cling to the inside of your sweater; scratchy yes, but warm and smells like you. she is a wild child she would be better pictured if i splashed this ink across the page. a rosarchs test a finger painting and you would squint and try to guess where she is going next. she is always on the go leaving crazy wakes. he tells her he doesn't know either. and she sees hope and despair both. he talks and she doesn't listen these words are not her language. then he stops and she doesn't have an answer either. man woman magnificent spark bending metal and tongues. i am wrapped up in you. (for kim b.) skin like snow soft, i could hold it on my lips and it would turn my green eyes blue. i would hold her in my hands and shiver from the unearthliness of it all. (for evan) with childish secret joy he tries to tell us how to smile, and we are swamped and sputtering his eyes are dry and the cuffs of his pants slap against his legs as he runs. he gets impatient, our smiles are not large enough to hold the amount of happiness he knows we could be feeling. magic like i have never felt when he told me about myself. we should all be this well known. her random memories whisper as they lie beneath the cushions. bound and gagged, they struggle oh the stories they could tell. she keeps her new days busy to forget the past, as much as anything else. her song is the same song you have heard it from her lips before. but now she is blowing through the day, finding the cracks and good accoustics. she whispers in the night and has started to grudge the sun. sun boy, the boy who hurts my eyes now, bright boy, burning boy who smells of sunscreen. give me my nightboy, and his dark eyes, the shady protection and the chills easier to hide and far less harsh. i have resorted to begging on stars. frantic i want somebody to want me frantic want me somebody somebody i want frantic somebody i want to want and i want you. through eyes that have only seen the daylight with happiness and gratitude, suddenly i am spiteful against the light that shows so much. lately i have been thankful at the dark for hiding the smaller imperfections, for making everyone just a little looser. the sun is life but the moon is love. she said, look, all this sky doesn't it refresh your soul? she said look, one day, that'll be you you'll be up there looking down at me and i'll be jealous. so jealous! you'll have to bring me back a star. he looked up at the sky and then back down he thought about her eyes and that the sky didn't refresh his soul half as much as she did. you were at best the food to feed a few crazed butterflies. i'm trying to remember what else there was about you. who said what and when and why. when is the best time to end this poem and what would you say if you saw it? words are all right as words but sometimes you just need to wail. sometimes it's the spaces between the notes that leave you feeling empty. and every once in a while words can't say a thing. now she's free, i get along. i'm on my own we're coping fine. but there's something lacking when you're sitting on the ground and your tears are really feeling the distance from your eyes to the floor. 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