February 2012
1 post
you just get used to it.
i suppose that there won’t be a better time for me to unabashedly record this breadth of feeling; barely censored, semi-public. i doubt that you’ll happen upon it any time soon, but if you do, it shouldn’t hold many surprises.
you’ve managed to reverse night and day. my sunsets are sunrises now, but that was a long time coming.
you’re the simple thing that...
May 2011
1 post
slow decay in the clockwork universe.
i grew in the womb upside down, so they had to cut me out. whenever i see a bug on the sidewalk I pick it up and move it to safety. i am a storm chasing, rifle shooting, edge walking sentimentalist. i was supposed to marry my best friend but we had religious differences. when i was little i thought that the fates of i and the yet-unknown man for me were so hopelessly tangled that god himself...
April 2011
1 post
home is where your heart never was.
lately i’ve been jarred by the rapidity of time’s passing, as if woken from sleep, swimming in the restless air- restless, (rest. less.) sleep is a slow death in a fast moving world.
there are three small punctures in the leftmost skin of my right palm, almost healed. grabbed a handful of long thorns to arrest a fall on a wet ivy’d slope. after i pulled them out i thought the...
March 2011
5 posts
a chernobyl survivor described the light from the ruined reactor as a sunset lasting two days.
here the radio crackles and hums with talk of evacuation zones and potassium iodide. i’m sitting here picking at my fingernails and refreshing news pages over and over to the faint scent of burning plastic, drinking apple-raspberry-cranberry juice and staring at the wilted roses that they were...
these idle forced pianist’s hands have forgotten too much for their brief time on earth.
oh, what i wouldn’t give to be out in the cold with you tonight, feeling that queasy approach anticipation i know so well. i have been neglecting myself; i have fallen into disrepair, and that is another familiar feeling, though unwelcome.
quiet expected disappointment tempered by...
this is my notebook now.
Elegant degradation is a term used in engineering to describe what occurs to machines which are subject to constant, repetitive stress.
Externally, such a machine maintains the same appearance to the user, appearing to function properly. Internally, the machine slowly weakens over time. Eventually, unable to withstand the stress, it breaks down.
the scorched earth method worked for russia but...
January 2011
1 post
summer rain.
in all our transparency i still have secrets i don’t say.
don’t we all, don’t we all.
don’t try to guess them; i am still strong in this regard. i’ll drag it out, for better or for worse. perhaps i am a coward, or perhaps for once i am being truly brave.
here i am shrouded in vagueness, vagaries as usual, but specifics aren’t meant for this medium.
...
September 2010
5 posts
born too late
i never knew you, but
i’m afraid to ask about you
because the truth might shatter the illusion
that maybe i wasn’t the only black sheep.
maybe you would have laughed at me in your head, or called me unrealistic, or maybe you would find the things i like- the things you did- hopelessly mundane. maybe it would have been really awkward, maybe you would have been tired or irritated...
waste.
at an arts festival in my hometown I came upon an elderly dutch fellow who seemed to be the only photographer on display who hadn’t committed numerous cardinal sins of photo editing and subject matter (though his work was far from groundbreaking or thought provoking).
he saw my gaze of silent approval and in a friendly and slightly accented voice he stated proudly that he still shot,...
housepets
4:50 am. heard the creaking of a chair; it sounded like that familiar scratching and soft thud i had become accustomed to in the house of my childhood. i turned around expecting to see a cat, softly purring and pushing for attention, but found nothing but air, the dripping of the faucet, whirring of my hard drive and the faint sound of the last summer crickets.
every time i stop to think about...
J.
i can’t pretend to have known you.
trying my hardest, i can’t conjure up much more than harsh sunlight on a winter day, me wrapped tightly in my pea coat and absently poking my fingers through the spaces between the thick mesh of the lunch table, writing page numbers and concepts on my hand in ball point pen- you sitting across from me, studying sheet music, memorizing lyrics, both of...
August 2010
5 posts
w girls
lovely doe-eyed thing, coltish in your youth and stumbling in your heels across the crosswalk- you glanced back at me as you raised a hand to hail a cab, the hem of your dress (tunic? boyfriend’s shirt?) just barely grazing the top of your thighs. what was in your stare? what did you, with your bangles and blush think of the pale dirty girl on the corner? did you guess that the black...
i fell in love with the city and out of love with everything else.
it’s settled in to stay again- i’ve almost resigned to this bitter acquaintance. it’s the feeling of being like one of those pools that collect under back porches after rain; limpid stagnant.
after falling in and out of unfulfilling sleep (during which we apparently almost got crushed by a runaway semi and came...
back then.
sometimes it feels like my life is made up of a series of in-betweens, short drives from one end of town to the next
just after dusk when most of the windows in the big old houses, apartments, duplexes and newly sprouted mcmansions are still lit yellow and you can get a fleeting glimpse into living rooms, foyers and kitchens. dinnertime conversations, card games, entering and leaving- i wonder...
July 2010
2 posts
stream of blessed unconsciousness
if i could wake from a dream and be holding my breath in the swimming pool at night when the lights come on to glitter and dance on the surface, with pruned fingers, floating in water that is almost too chill as the sun has gone, my parents making small talk a world away.
if i could close my eyes tight and open then to be running out -briefly, because it’s almost bedtime- into the sea of...
distract
i apologize; this is most disjointed.
inhale
exhale
i register each individual heartbeat.
my dreams have been troubled.
we’re keeping in time, back and forth, co-morbid insomnia.
i try to wrap around you and hold calm silent still
but my mind is reaching out in all directions,
many tendrils, like vines, live wires
crawling over the covers,
dropping to the ground,
over the floors...
April 2010
1 post
the calm.
slots of sunlight from in between the blinds wrap around you and shimmer-shake warm and white to drive away the last vestiges of winter.
we lay like cats clasping from fingers to toes and i expect our bones to grow and wind together like twisting vines any time now.
evening brings the clouds and we’re still entwined, shifting about in languor, yet somehow restless.
rolling overhead...
March 2010
1 post
February 2010
1 post
i am going to pull the blinds and put out the stars
so that i might sit in the dark
and quietly wonder if our corresponding thoughts
ever occur at precisely the same time.
i might actually start to believe that space and time died yesterday
though neither of us were there to bear witness.
you see, i’m finding myself on the edge again
[this time not alone]
and though you’re over...
January 2010
3 posts
oh, i am an insidious thing; i pretend not to know the implications.
grant me fixity;
you ought to capture me like a lightning bug in a jar, though their light is much warmer than any that i can give off, i’m afraid.
1.618
protégez-moi de moi-même.
thank god for the precision and choice conveyance of language
because without it, you might actually be able to tell what i mean.
what is there to say, other than
i am in love with your skeleton.
it’s the golden ratio at the golden hour.
i lay anesthetized on your bed- i don’t know if you’ll find any particular use for my tangle of veins and...
December 2009
1 post
our world is a world in stasis.
frozen not in stillness but in motion.
mechanized clanging in the din.
will there still be stories to tell in the absence of the machines?
or will our voices be lost in the static of countless tv screens
drowned out in the hum and buzz of radios stuck between stations?
we lay here and attempt fall asleep
to a uneasy lullaby of road noise, lights from passing...
November 2009
4 posts
winter is thorns to scratch the skin
reopening old wounds
and bringing night early.
she stands at the edge of the woods
watches the sun sink behind the cold bones of the trees.
quietly kneeling to no-one in the coming dusk,
a sinner lacking a redeemer.
when spiders die, their legs curl inward
and they clutch themselves
because they have no-one else to hold.
i have a confession.
i have a waking dream.
in it, i have become disenchanted with nature.
my imagined world is purely manmade.
a subversion of pure organics: the next step.
sterile, geometric.
chrome, glass, concrete and steel, everything in silvers and grays.
every aspect is controlled and maintained.
fluoride rivers run in set paths through downtown.
there are no more birds, no more...
At the still point of the turning world i have you
half awake, i open my eyes and you’re gone.
October 2009
3 posts
girl detaches, floats in space.
dangling in the blur of stars and wind.
welcome to true nature.
inescapable and unsound.
a well known cycle: latch on to lose all.
this is merely the newer, bolder cousin of an old hurt.
so she’s vague, what of it?
read her words -though seldom seen-
not her lips.
the end is the beginning; tried and tested by time.
ruin built into creation: would...
i do not know
what to do.
September 2009
4 posts
fall is in the air.
i’m stranded with plans yet unfurfilled.
i will DO something today.
promise? promise.
it’s a little funny when you wake up and realize that it’s all over and gone. forever.
i might be getting into a little trouble if i don’t keep this under control, and succomb to the incessant call of bright lights and dizzying heights.
echoing footsteps a gasp of smoke in the chill breathless pursuit of the blackest places light in the murky depths it’s winter button your coat and your shoes, tie them tight god only knows how long we’ll be running how far we’ll go and he’s not likely to tell. oh, and if you think the moon is cold then you’ve never considered the flourescent lightbulb. the light...
theatre
tabula rasa: blank slate.
we’ve been smoothed, not cleaned.
we take on the qualities of those around us because we have no qualities of our own.
for whatever reason, we are hollow.
pure logic.
it gets harder to fake.
some do it to feel alive.
we do it to feel.
9.8.09.
a day of goodbyes to all sorts of things.
i don’t quite feel it yet, but i will.
we discovered and revisited,
changed things that are dulled by absence and insidious new values and affection.
we spilled out in nonchalance things that meant something before.
there is no line in the sand.
we were ready to be lost with the coming of the storm.
picture this: a single candle, an...
August 2009
6 posts
my bones ache for altitude.
i want to be breathless.
i want to halt my thoughts and follow through with my actions.
i’m going to better myself while i’m alone.
i’ll be ready soon.
you dreamed
that you and i held hands as the city fell
and we watched it again on a tv screen.
“we just want to breathe without machines.”
here’s to the realization that last night’s dream was just that and nothing more.
it’s something.
love is staying up til dawn to watch the door as they sleep.
love is stoically holding them as they cry.
love is risking letting the scary part out to play.
love is not going upstairs to hide.
love is going for the bottle, and knowing that if there is cause for that split-second decision to be made, you’ll slam it against the banister,
and follow through with the rest.
i am wide awake,...
July 2009
19 posts
the word precarious takes on whole new meaning when applied to a horizontal ladder between the roofs of adjacent high rises.
in other words;
tonight,
i feel painfully, wonderfully, horrifyingly & beautifully
alive.
this started with the junkyard. a wonderland of smashed-up cars to stand on as the sun sets. broken signs, cds scratched beyond repair, umbrellas, beer bottles, windshields spider-webbed with cracks that gleam in the light. we dragged car seats from their holdings to serve as chairs. in the winter, when the trees were skeletons, and the blackbirds made V’s across the cold clear blue and we...
“in the commonplace i find unexpected themes and intensities.”