spring pieces

"- and go out and meet something I don't understand. a man would have to put his soul at hazard. he'd have to say, 'ok., i'll be part of this world." - no country for old men

running by the monona terrace. k. sachs on the blues guitar. groceries and guiness. polka-dotted ballet flats. the last spring in madison. smoky quartz. black current tea, mozzarella veggie ciabatta sandwiches, and blood oranges. thesis writing tuesdays at barriques w. the rego. plaza thursdays. dreams about fire escape revolutions. collecting blank postcards. making amends. daylight savings time.

underdogs with good intentions | amputees with stamp collections
plywood skinboards ride the ocean | salty noses suntan lotion | always seriously joking
and rambunctiously soft-spoken
you're such a good friend i hafta break your heart [ k. dawson ]

maybe all men got one big soul everybody's a part of, all faces are the same man.

or just, see you later?

i guess it's not the way you always planned it
looks like you're heading for a crash landing
that's just the way it looks from where i'm standin'

rollercoasterofaweek. waking up with a fever, watching a senator take hold of a nation, driving two hours with my surrogate family to a city by the sea (or the best that i can get, in the middle of the snowiest winter in wisconsin history). the tiny small children bring me up, and your familiar eyes weigh heavy on my mind these days. one minute i'm cruising toward the open ocean, the pulitzer, the teacher of the year; the next, i'm alone in a library, my bed, the corner of a cold, deserted street. the king size bed with the selfish space-sleeper. cafe au kahlua. visits with my chicos like old times, but still aching because it will never be the same. vd, sola. i like it that way, mostly. just not when i've had a few screwdrivers, my house is full of lovers, it won't stop snowing, and my dates keep falling flat of overarching effort.

things i'm looking for this year:
the jim for my pam.
a publisher.
the appropriate situation in which to reenact each of the individual bluth family chicken dance(s).
a house by the sea that rumbles and moans.
sleep.

even though they weren't so sweet

"you're a funny girl, you know that indie? for someone who doesn't believe in war - you sure have a lot of books about it."
"i'm an atheist, too. but one of my favorite songs is a hymn."
"exactly. you're a funny girl. but that's what i love about you."
"you don't love me gorgeous. you love the idea of me."
"maybe i do. but maybe i love you, too."

• remembering why it was there in the first place. i was so angry for a while that i forgot, and that's never the point.
• conversations about writing; pulling it out of your mouth like a string coiled in the pit of your stomach. slowing the wheels long enough to spit it out on the page. spitting it wrong.
• dreams about: a room full of broken pianos, the tango down 12th ave - backwards, sneaking around, climbing up and over.
• no parking on the front step, the door step, the bus stop, the rest stop, the stoop for the vacant. no parking for the vacant, the vagrant, the worldly possessions collective. no parking.
• {positively 4th street} for both sides, now.
• the tri-bar hop with mr. rego (also known as the genna's - montemarte - nachtspiel loop).
• samson; still my favorite r. spektor.
• [the self-indulgent artist] v. [contributions to the greater collective] debate
• "the slow wearing-down of time, right here in our faces" ( i get my philosopher's vox from my father)
• sociological round table studies.
• walking out the back door without really saying goodbye / and not making eye contact much because when i let myself / it might get dangerous again (and my stubborn from my mother)

[...don't answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in through the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.]
-advice to myself; louise erdrich-

on jaguar sharks and the importance of catching meteors

i am obsessed with time. clocks. memory.

after the new year, i always end up looking back and getting caught in moments, mostly those which i've written down. except the actual words on the page, or wherever i've scrawled them, are not always the ones which i remember when i reread them. i see sapphire hummingbirds, and i mean the stream, and trying to settle. i think of basil, and a tiny bleach-blonde italian man who speaks spanish with an accent and has eyes the size of maracuya flashes inside my head.

my favorites are the times when all i wanted was to pause everything, to stop the progressive movement of time, and to be in wherever i was, eternal.

drinking hierba luisa from those little plastic cups on the front steps of the reserve every morning, waiting for bigote to finish breakfast; especially during rainstorms. watching the bats begin to swoop through the gulley from six fifteen ( just as the sun begins to go down thirty miles south of pedernales) until i can no longer see anything but quick flashes of black [and all the time thinking that maybe they are just tricks of light, things my eyes are creating, visual little white lies]. jaguar shark skies on the boat, sleeping restless first on the chairs and then on the deck, and then curled, cold and growing ill, against the bow itself. standing in alessandro's bathroom and staring at his grapefruit as they grow in the open window. the flight invasion over our heads near prince phillip's steps. mompiche; every moment. the lovely bones; every word[because of the story or because of where i was at, in my heart? maybe it was both]. singing on the beach by the bonfire, with harmonica and guitar and words about lonely sailors coming home from the sea.

sitting on top of the sand dunes, our dunes. talking about the brothers, and how their eyes are the same. not needing to say much. nothing and everything mattering in moments, and deciding spontaneously to come home. long distance telephone calls from airports, out of nowhere and that meaning all of it. being where i ought to be. singing on softball fields to baby girls in the twilight. drinking coffee at fair trade with the smart mouth, and the philosopher, and sola [plus peppermint ice cream]. doing yoga at james madison, and stretch stretch stretching up higher, toward the seagulls. pushing my ribs out toward mendota. morning breakfast dates with my girls. powwows in king sized beds. allowing the serenade to make me smile. darjeeling, and the emanation afterward. being terrified of say anything. inappropriate songs and unproductive evenings around the dinner table. gorgonzola and butternut squash and candied walnuts and raspberry port and banana pancakes and fair trade coffee and frozen snickers and pinkus bars and spanish rice and macaroni and newcastle.

they're running together there at the end. amassing weight, like a giant ball of letters, falling down a hill the size of san fransisco. the quickfire synapse collection which happens because i am tangential. and twitchy. i jump all around. but i'd rather be like that...i'd rather be like that, than straightforward and unscary and constantly content with everything. REVEL, i say. i kept it for a year, and i think i can do it again.


didn't i | didn't i tell you

plans of attack from the voice of pacifism

espressitos and loverbeans. monterrey - the place AND the word. thick black ink. therapeutic cleaning parties. rendezvous - the accidental kind. the aloha stratus that could.

we get nostalgic [for disaster] when it's cold and the snowplows rumble outside at night. even when we are rushing along in tennis shoes and pencil skirts and wearing too many scarves for such a chaotic evening, we get nostalgic. that's where the aching comes from. if you could choose when to remember things you used to have, but then you lost, anyone but the most masochistic would choose to forget. nostalgia has its price. but you get to look back! all those things you reveled in, the tiny bits: the little one on the city bus; falling in to a drawer full of fire alarms; running from the swing-set across the street in a rainstorm. we get to look back.

1. digital love [daft punk]
2. arc of time [bright eyes]
3. all my days [alexi murdoch]
4. alright [john legend]
5. mascara [killing heidi]
6. parting of the sensory [modest mouse]
7. these days [nico]

THIS IS IT BOYS. THIS IS WAR.
things to read about over break: peter coyote, sweet willie tumbleweed, and the san fransisco counterculture revolution. about 50 of ginsberg's rambly interviews. the ocean. t.c. boyle's take on humanity. if i die in a combat zone. more: borges, vonnegut, rushdie.
find out how to: get to africa. become employed at 826. pay for a TEFL certificate.
make plans for: traveling to mexico & seattle. finding a conversation partner. being the room lady.
WRITE.

"excitement blew out of his eyes in stabs of fiendish light" - j.k. this is how i feel about next semester. about next year. generally, the next in every category you can think of. but the thing about it is, we don't have to love every day - sometimes there are blizzards and snow plows, unexpected phone calls from people who we had almost forgotten were in existence. there are all of these things that make us holler and stamp our feet, feel the need to clean excessively because it is the only way you can get anything to slow the fuck down. this is just fine. sometimes, in small moments, we hate these days.
BUT. BUT BUT BUT.
learn how to revel.
if you practice, it comes. ever so slowly, but it does.

i belong to an unholy disorder. we call ourselves 'Our Lady of Perpetual Astonishment.' - k.v.

the middle of november not so blues

i've been out walking | don't do too much talking these days | i had a lover | don't think i'd risk another these days | i don't do too much scheming these days | please don't confront me with my failures | i have not forgotten them

favorite things: outrageous flirtation under the writing table. spontaneous coffee dates with the smart mouth. acting boldly. being ballsy in wine bars. montmarte on unnecessary evenings. frida kahlo and her grilled vegetable quesadillas. anthony kiedis. wanting to be anthony kiedis' baby momma. riding my bike. the smell of oak tree leaf litter. love & basketball. DARJEELING. the kinks. wes anderson festival showings at the hamilton. the sparrows on the terrace. sassy writing TA's. something corporate kicks. understanding the roots of my social conscience [my grandparents]. graceful days. not-so-graceful days. awkward soccer games. ghetto fabulous monitor swaps. being irresponsible. san fran, seattle, and bangor. regina spektor as love,asia in musical form. kabamba jasper. rachel carson. sweatpants and roadtrips and gorgeous lake views from bumpy rollercoaster roads. skipping class to write. telling g. kitchen ridiculous stories.

not so favorite things: tfa (only for now, because i am bitter). being picked up by inappropriate people in parking lots. bad timing. the incident with the singing bowl, & sold-out modest mouse. wanting to cut off all my hair. becoming chuchaqi in the middle of lecture. cashews. rejection by bassist.


i make lists because i have to. and because anastasia krupnik got it into my head when i was eight years old that it was the perfect way to make sense of your life when things like babies and boys and awkward neighborhood barbeques were causing problems. smart lady.

mochasnmonopoly: if i was a man, and a bassist, and you sent me a drink, i would have sex with you in the bathroom of the bar.

icarus

with wings like these...
it's real hard to keep myself from getting so close to the sun.

one of us must know (sooner or later) : bob dylan
battle : colbie caillat
carry you around : ani difranco
just for now (live) : imogen heap
omaha : counting crows
honey honey : feist
stacked crooked : the new pornographers
pray for us : the melanesian brotherhood


buying watermelon in the morning. sauteed carrots, tomatoes, and mushrooms {three things i never used to like}. doing the dishes to louis armstrong. talking to my father about beer. the hamilton girls. cloves on the front porch, and laughing too loud. sassy black russian bartenders. sassy vodka katherines. MJ on the violin. turquoise sheets. finding old photographs of dance parties in vacant apartments. new skin, pink skin, growing a thick skin. seeing your ghost on the sidewalk. trying not to hope at the hint of green. caramel apple empanadas. running for literacy. antifall reunion plans, grocery shopping, and the view from our bathroom window.

the UW-stout is naming their library after my grandfather.


did you hear? | are you scared? | huh, these feathers | i fly like a bird.

someone who knows better

scabs on my knees and blood
in the trees but the world has been struck
by a greater disease
no worse than the lovers
{the gravity of light}
but at least we'll lie in the aisles
singing.

i will never be the woman in white who brings an umbrella every time it looks like rain. (this would be too logical. and i like being caught in a thunderstorm. the tea tastes all the better that way.)
my tennis shoes will never be clean. i run through the mud on purpose.
the 5 way intersection outside my window is lonely at night, except for the blinking red of the stoplights.
that window will be open, even in winter. i get hot when i sleep.
sometimes i write metaphors that will not make sense to anyone else on purpose; this is a subconscious ploy to find my soulmate. it has not worked, but there is time yet. i do not give up.
the best way to make a baby stop crying is to tell her a story as if she were a grown lady. about things like martinis, and heartbreak, and willow trees which fall down in wind storms. she still wants to know about things like that, even if she can't do anything but cry.
three places which will always have my heart: the pacific, the mississippi, the lake.
be gentle in october.


I'm coping, okay? I'm coping! So uhh... shut up, and look at all my crap!

ginsberg yelled at me from the countertop

Sitting cross legged on the counter-top and letting the sounds of the street wander into my ears, while Ginsberg stares at me, melancholy from the cover.

“you aren’t trying hard enough”
He is shaking his head as he says it, because he knows how I’ve been wasting my time.

“at least, if you’re going to let the summer roll by like it happens every day as easy, write it down. at least, goddamit.”

I know he’s saying it like he’s gonna cry, and I’m gonna cry, too, but not for the same reason. maybe it is…I can’t read his mind. but it’s a soft warning, making me turn the spotlight on myself even though the cord is plugged in to the back of my head, and when it spins the hot phosphorescent glow through my eyelids, the base of my neck tightens with the pressure. the self-deprecation is amusing, I think, to the passersby. Can everyone see my pretense? my loss of purpose, of the shallow quality my day in existence has been driven to?
“no. now you’re just being egotistical. No one pays attention. Even the barista in the café who was shouting about the degradation of the whole ‘goddamn fucking universe!’ That’s the problem, see. people will fight for the grandeur because they see the results, the glory of their sacrifice. but no one loves enough beyond the fragment. the title they can place on it. ‘I’m an activist. I fight for the rights of the downtrodden.’ What the fuck does that mean? Seriously, where is the definition of your life in that sentence? Nowhere. So you say activist. That could mean any number of things. You could write pages for pamphlets on free trade wage thieving and pass them out on the corner during the sidewalk sales. But that’s not what you meant, because you’ve never worked for fair trade, you usually lend your extra time on Thursday afternoons to women’s health education services; and now people will be confused, and when you try to explain you will be misinterpreted, leading to your embattled, righteous, holier-than-the-taxi driver personal vendetta to enlighten the world. but you are bitter for it, for the weight. that the charge of the universe has been passed to you in a paper bag, instead of the bottle of wine you were promised. well, the fuck to you, it’s your own fault for taking it on. Stop complaining, and get to work.”

quite the rant, but he's right. i'm still sitting on the countertop.

she sings it for me, the reason why I kept trying with this. because I adore you. that’s all, really. the truest reason. I don’t have another one, because everything else that comes to mind is a contradiction. you don’t really fight for things the way that I do; maybe it’s because I know how fast they can be taken, how fast they are ripped away (this makes me cling, but not with my hands, or with a wailing plea; I remember everything with a fury born of grief). you don’t really seem to care either way. I’d like to think otherwise, but many better women have fallen at the feet of the apathetic fools who knew they were the lording kings of beating hearts.

[july 23]

I ran away. In the dark. by myself. To drift into my room and savour in my irie. I am hiding. but you gave up. I lose myself in songs and my words fight to escape soon enough, like butterflies spilling into my mouth up from my throat, but my lips are stuck tight. This is repression. I am repressing things. I think I’m having a mental breakdown of sorts, because I am questioning everything I do lately, and I feel like I’m changing so many habits out of fear that they are destroying what I want my life to be instead of what it actually IS. I don’t want to be afraid like this for the rest of my life; questioning every decision I will ever make again? I need to stop this, I’m freaking out. [district and the calming gospel of chick rock]

Because I am only out for the good ness in life, and as long as the negatives do not topple their weight over across the gracious and witty and absolute spectacular moments, everything is okay by me. perhaps I could say I am an opportunist in search of hedonism; ready to jump from the train as it curves at seventy-five miles an hour around the cliff. I will fly, and it will be like gravity evaporating as I fly towards the sun, ready to dismiss the myth of icarus. You have finally pushed me hard enough so that the energy builds beneath my bones, I take flight. I try not to hate, because it just ends up making me angrier, and then I become like a balloon about to bust. I will, at times. In the end, however, it will only be unabashed, illogical, adoration that I hold in my chest.
[september 9]

Oh tell me a secret and tell me a story
Lets make up plans that will never come true
This is delicious, hey thanks for the dinner
hey you know, all the stars that shoot in the sky
They're falling in love with the sun (mirah)

welcome to the 2 1 9

honestly, i'm trying to be better here. i really am. sometimes though, you just sneak back in. and i hate you! i hate you. i'm sorry, i don't actually i hate you.

the little green house
on this busy bustling barbarous corner
[there are gang fights and street riots - just like i said.
revolution
on pickney street! do you
remember?]
is full of windows and wood floors and
too much noise.
the pots and pans are crooked sometimes, and the
wine glasses are cracked.
the stairwell will probably break bones before
the end of next summer, and the garbage disposal is
forever and hopelessly clogged.
but we sit on those stairs and tell stories about
hearts and
old soccer jerseys and
how the wine glasses got cracked to begin with. we eat
peanut butter and chocolate
just as often as we eat
roasted squash and sundried tomatoes and black beans.
the lights in the living room are mismatched paper lanterns, but they
are perfectly aligned with the
melted candle rack which sits in the fireplace
during dinner.
the boys who work at the market
across the street are beginning to recognize us
as the girls who need
ben & jerry's at midnight, but
the girls in this little green house on this
busy bustling barbarous corner are
fighters. we fight back.

september 1 - september 14.
1. we're both so sorry : mirah & the weeds
2. house by the sea : iron & wine
3. a case of you : joni mitchell
4. inkwell : the blue scholars
5. change is gonna come : otis redding
6. slow west vultures : the mountain goats
7. god's country : ani difranco
8. fidelity : regina spektor
9. asthenia : blink-182
10. something pretty : patrick park
11. nothing better : the postal service
12. dolores : miles davis
13. hey ya : obadiah parker
14. me and julio down by the schoolyard : paul simon

"we passed a teenage couple in leather and studs, she with
a mohawk and he with shaved head, his dented bruise-blue
skull covered in messages rendered in ink the color of raw
meat.
mo got a running start and - 'HiYA!' she yelled - kicked
the man in the thigh. he was shocked. hand and i were less
shocked. the girls were learning karate at school, and
liked to try it out on people who looked combative.
'daaaaamn... freak,' the skull man said, wiping the
footprint off his jeans. i apologized. i gave hand a look,
making sure he didn't start talking.
'they're not well,' hand explained."
-eggers.

itch

I am evening the score
I am cutting the umbilical cord
curled with my teeth against my knees
I am scratching at my consciousness
like a bitch with fleas
I think you'll be greatly pleased
to learn that yours was the hardest
itch to relieve

this is me
without my hair
welcome to my open stare
I got nothing to hide no more
why disguise what isn't there
I am an eyesore
I am a detour
you can find me crying on
the shoulder of the road
and I will tell you
what you want to hear
before you go
and that is that
yours was the hardest itch to relieve
yours was the hardest itch to relieve

I've mapped out my course
looks like it's all uphill
I've got a heavy heart to carry
but a very strong will
it's just hard to travel
in the shadow
of regret
in fact it's so hard
that I haven't actually left yet
[ani]

i can't believe i ever thought it was a good idea.

candy

once upon a time there was candy & dan.
things were very hot that year... | all the wax was melting in the trees.
he would climb balconies, climb everywhere, do anything for her | oh danny boy.
thousands of birds, the tiniest birds, adorned her hair |
everything was gold.
one night the bed caught fire.
danny the daredevil | candy went missing.
the days' last rays of sunshine cruise like sharks.
then there was a gap in things | and the whole earth tilted.
this is what we're after | with you inside me comes the hatch of death | and perhaps i'll simply never sleep again.
the monster in the pool.
we are a proper family now with cats & chickens & runner beans | everywhere i looked.
FRIDAY - i didn't mean that mother of the blueness | angel of the storm. remember me in my opaqueness.
you pointed at the sky, that called sirius or dog star, but here on earth | fly away sun
ha ha fucking ha you are so funny dan.
a vase of flowers by the bed, my bare
blue knees at dawn. | these ruffled sheets & you are gone &
i am going too.
i broke your head on the back of the bed | but the baby died in the morning.
i gave him a name | his name was thomas | poor little god
his heart pounds like a voodoo drum.

- words on the wall -
candy [novel: luck davies, film: neil armfield]

beauty in the breakdown, part II.

throw a little more love my way, baby.
singing and swaying and softly speaking.
spontaneous, triumphant returns.
running down hallways wearing only tennis shoes and swinging chainsaws maniacally.
tiny dancer chorus revivals in busses with bruised egos and bad acid trips.
wanting to be the girl with the vaccuum, if only for the czech.
stories about the circus.
letting go a little bit more in a rainstorm.
mr. bojangles; or, little.
growing in to my love letters.
wanting to write a screenplay, live by the green rules, dance more loudly on streetcorners.
vintage bachelor party bonanzas with megs.
run.

i have been in a very strange place all summer long. not like last year, which was just a whirwind, a maelstrom; one of those anecdotes you try to explain and never can because no matter how hard you try to verbalize it, you just had to be in it to understand. not like that. it hasn't been all that i've needed it to be, but i have high expectations. and it was a transition. the last one, besides all that. (not meaning for life, just in terms of this identity, because after this, it all goes out the window, and i'm somewhere else without even blinking an eye.) if anything, my dissatisfaction has made me recognize more of what i need to do to make it all worthwhile.

advice from mediocre madison in the summertime:
don't waste daylight. appreciate cold showers. wine goes well with everything. naps are necessary, as well as a little soul. journey can explain a lot of things; so can ani. keeping up with the jones' is hardwork. porch sitting alley cats exist outside of san francisco. thunder in the nighttime makes for interesting illumination. don't live too far into the future. keep your eyes level with the horizon. time in one place gets shorter - revel. being honest is never a bad thing, even when it looks messy on the outside. sometimes people take chances you don't expect, and then you have to take a chance on them. bartenders don't have to be nice, but the good ones always are. driving faster only helps for so long. eyes are tricky. jacques cousteau is one of my trump cards. and living inside a glass bell only feels like a menagerie if you acknowledge the onlookers on the outside.

let go.

lost in the circus, again.

or the elephants will get out and forget to remember what you said
and the ferris wheel junkies will spin there forever instead
but if dreams are like movies, then memories are films about ghosts
we'll all be moving slowly slowly south on down the coast

i am wasting my time. [this is me, being restless.]
chain smoking cloves, i am wasting my time.
maybe it is the claustrophobia that i have been
expecting and half-heartedly trying to fight off...
or the sneaking suspicion that i cornered something merely
because it was exhausted from the fight.
my laundry is damp, and refusing to dry.
the pinot grigio hums at the back of my throat, while my thoughts
chase the blue speckled lights of the
circus across the canvas ceiling.

i am reharmonizing to the wrong song. the piano line inspires the words for a moment, but then they flicker and fade away as my fingers race to write them down. i think my heart has grown lazy, and i am having the hardest time bringing it back to zero.

there was a glimpse. sometimes that's all we get.

dirt on the ground

the buzz of black cloves on my lips.
a ring of blue back where it belongs.
passing the alley cats on the corner.
the faint red glow of brick at dusk.
organic. vanilla. feta. tortilla chips and cheddar.
waking up as an oven.
letting my honesty show through.
the crying tree.
adrenaline on the surface of a river winding.
iced coffee with the ghost of allen ginsberg.
procrastination, involving: research, heartache, empty threats.
headwraps.
ciao bella & pinot grigio.
breaking writer's block wide open.
track 11.
boys who don't look away when i catch them watching me.
gravity laden phone calls.
the alice in wonderland complex.
broken social scene, brian eno, bill jones, black cadillacs, and blink.
"oh, perverse pentagon poets..." - the professor who dared to climb the plain of jars after king heroin and the drug lords.
letting all of the stitches fall from my face where his fist bruised the fragile skin of hers.
the mississippi river valley
irish brogue.


I think that it's absurd
that you think I
am the derelict daughter

where the sidewalk ends

i wonder what it's like to know that i made the rain | straight up, what did you hope to learn about here?
i wish the real world would just stop hassling me, and you, and you and me...

i've lost my ability to concentrate on one thought for more than thirty seconds. really only when i'm trying to write. and i hate writer's block. but its more than just that now; i'm living in a state of constant hyper-sped thought because there are these pieces of the sky just falling through the sidewalk right in front of my face, and i have to be three steps ahead of everything if i want to survive. i dodge by thinking, and talking, and spinning in metaphorical circles. in emotional spirals.

and we carry each other (but i carry your heart, i carry it in my heart)

tangential. i am, you are. that's where it's coming from, i think. it really couldn't be any other way, because there is no other logical explanation. not that this is logical. but nothing has been logical for years, and i've gotten used to living in a chaotic sort of calm. [is this depressing? that i've learned how to live through things? because i never wanted to know how to do that. it's not that i wish that i could be shattered. to be broken so hard that i'm gasping and watching the world fade out in swirls of colored light, as if i had been hit in the face, or held my breath too long. but it is becoming more difficult to fracture me, because i've stopped putting all of the pieces back when they fall out. its like a self-continuation of the slow decay that gravity is causing.]

the world owes me nothing | and we owe each other the world

i could try to express how lucky i am, but it's impossible. and i could attempt to write down in words why you are my person, and how much i would cease to exist if something ever happened to you, yet i can't. but if there ever comes a day when i can no longer turn to you and have you explain the way my heart works, because you're gone, i'll be done. you can't leave me first. not everyone has that in someone, and i promise to whatever fucking other-worldly omniscient or otherwise deity that may or may not exist out in that great wide universe, i do not take it for granted.

does anyone else feel like we're all just living in a cosmic game of russian roulette?

the things they carried:
1. keep moving forward when things are scary. chances are everyone else around you is just as terrified, and their strength is resonating from your skin.
2. protect each other. wield your heart like a weapon, and watch the repercussions flicker through the waves you make in your friends.
3. refuse to forget. [this is not synonymous for wallowing.]
4. let your scars heal.
5. sing with tears in your throat. the pain that hides in the back of your mouth will escape, and it will seem that the stream is unending. but it will. all things will pass, in the end.

and i have learned
that even landlocked lovers yearn
for the sea

baby prairie dogs. going to the zoo, and being something more than what i'm used to. crying in the middle of a sidewalk full of strangers. playing with cards. being excited to spend time. finding strips of film at james madison park. water people. raspberry chocolate chip cookies.

sæglópur, á lífi
kominn heim
(a lost seafarer, alive
has returned home)

[the big ship]: brian eno
[brothers on a hotel bed]: death cab for cutie
[hold on, hold on]: neko case
[real world]: matchbox 20
[sæglópur]: sigur ros
[somebody to love]: queen
[straw dog]: something corporate (live at london park)

clementine: but you will! but you will. you know, you will think of things. and i'll get bored with you and feel trapped because that's what happens with me.
joel: okay.

kleptomaniacal coffee house parties

So hum hallelujah

The universe of numbers that represents the global economy. Millions of hands at work, billions of minds. A vast network, screaming with life. An organism. [pi]

relating stories. blasting fall out and driving toward the weekend. buying mini bottles of booze in waukesha. chocolate raspberry martinis, jazz bands, and grumpy bartenders. "do you taste as good as you look?" pancakes. the little black dress. nailpolishremover dip. to common grounds. the awkward curly headed mumbling boy. the rollarblading family, and the coffee fall. stealing the inverted watermelon cup. qdoba! back to pazzo. barhopping. f-ed up dreams about car accidents, den conversations, horseback riding in iraq, and train tracks. planning camping extravaganzas. mind-fuck movies. vignettes. chickenshits.


three things:
And one day we'll get nostalgic for disaster

Sing, until your lungs give out

isn't it tragic?

sometimes, i wonder if i'll ever be able to write anything that has never been said before. or find the words that will explain the emotions of a stranger to themselves. because a lot of people have done that for me, and i can't help but wonder if i'll ever be that good. on a totally different note; i have beauties for friends. assholes, and lovers, too. that's the best of it, though, because i wouldn't have it any other way.

Best friends, ex-friends to the end
Better off as lovers and not the other way around
are we all wrong?

come hell or high water

I remember when the whales had wings, she said. Whatever happened? I said. It got to be too noisy with all the airplanes & other stuff, so they flew into the ocean & never came back. Some days, she added, I think about going too.

"Be clearly aware of the stars and INIFINITY ON HIGH"
said Vincent Van Gogh, to his brother Theo.

how are we aware of infinity on high? being clearly aware...do i have to keep my eyes open until they are scalded by the light? because the light from the stars is late. 60 million years too late. it's not even really there anymore; we're only seeing the residue it left in traveling time particles. am i the only person whose heart stammers at the thought? because staring at the shadows on your face and not being able to touch them is like this to me. you know what i mean. [this reminds me of singing gloria in excelsies deo, and i have no idea why.] how can we move through our own lives without questioning our knowing that the forward motion isn't actually sideways, or worse yet, imaginary? i think the breaking point comes when you're sitting across the room from someone and you can feel the space between. i'm real close to that, man. i told you once, i told you twice. if i have to tell you a third time, i might evaporate.

you want to travel? you hate foreign countries.
i did. but i don't anymore. and you've turned me in to someone else. you've made me want things i never thought i would want.
black shirt leaning quiet into my ear following my ankles with rusty eyes.
i run far and wide and know that i can return to that, still steady.
steady!
nothing is steady like that. except for now.
trying to avoid the thought of leaving. sneaking around corners with lenses
attempting to capture the perfect
photograph.
the perfect unknowing glance.
i am leaping through the water, but i dive up and down
over the surface of the waves as if it
were not a barrier;
i can see the underside of your heart from there.


these are the names of my love songs:
nearly crying at the epiphany of [saeglopur] sigur ros
"i am a monster! i am a beast!" - large black man on library mall. he was cute.
blowing bubbles at passing folk from the platform.
"it's easy to lose your mind, being on planet earth and all." - denis; a phone conversation at shakti.
boys in my kitchen.
[chelsea hotel no. 2] leonard cohen
flirting with the mysterious colombian man at work.
"this is two years of everything all wrapped up in one human being... my god, i'm sexually frustrated for you!" - the wife.
[bang the doldrums] fall out boy.

let us go!
though we know it's a hopeless endeavor
the ties that bind, they are barbed and spined
and hold us close forever.

the release and the regression

and it feels like nothing has changed, everything remains the same. except, of course, that everything is different.

i tried to give it up | as if that could have been enough | but it didn't work | because of that shirt you're wearing | that shows every freckle | i know | every freckle i want to follow.

black feather dusters, and other interesting stories:
the post op mix, take II. pressing my luck. walking to my (former) castle in the rain. half-naps. fat squirrel. being on the inside of my head, and looking out through a backwards mirror. girltalk, with peanut butter. showing the world to kate. the smell of lakeshore. water at the high top, and the shy sidling eyes. being assured of telephone wires. lake mendota, the amazing guitar, and black jacks. dirty girl scouts and green fish bowls. running down three flights of stairs, and still not being far enough away. the release of fear. parking lots. fences and alleys and sidewalks under crescent slivered glow. knees. small voices in early morning hours. chocolate cake pans, washing the dishes, and falling asleep to [bob, ani, simon, & rob]. mike droho and his covers of [the freshman, your song, crash]. riding in vans. seeing sully from the other side. reenactments. horrible spanish. too much drunk. being warm. revelations, realizations, resignation, and rage. getting lost in milwaukee (kind of). my person. chick flicks, waltzing in grocery stores, and playing chef with avocado and ham. SING. olive garden ala sex and the city. 40 year old jaeger bombs. the card trick table. spooning. not having to talk, and only needing to listen. roadtrips.

if i push too hard, its because i want things to be better.
i want us to be better. i want you to be better.
sure, i make waves.... i mean, you have to.

if i'm better off | better off

rule number seven

7. write as if it were for only one person. if you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
[ rules for creative writing 101, introduction to bagombo snuffbox. k. vonnegut]

this is my ecuavida.
living in wooden houses, with too many cucarachas, and twice as many rats. rain at night, flooded muddy roads in the morning. constantly greeting everyone, even when i’m in no mood to be friendly. red beans and vegetables and crispy burnt rice. the pacific (at night, by sunset, in my hair, in the pages of my books, in my heart). herba luisa [fresh, not from the tea bag]. mold. the bats (murcielagos) which swoop through the (sometimes) flooded river valley at exactly 620 in the evening. the crack in the shower wall that looks like a spider when the light isn’t right. trying not to slip and fall in the mud on the way to the bathroom in the nighttime. the triple curves in the road to tabuga which i count subconsciously in my head on the way to school. playing politics in spanish. being trapped by a flooded river with andrea at the house of a wide-eyed Italian man in the middle of the ecuadorian costal campo, having calamar, fresh basil, and espresso, and talking about international politics and futbol. taking pictures of pictures. my chicos. leading them into the reserve, and watching as they fall in love with el bosque, and each other. panaderias and the fruit market on the corner. the springwater of pd (a rum and coke). taking over the dance floor, crazy gringa style. the loud ass ecuadorian polka music at six o’clock in the morning. the “bombed little man” that is our chef. being sad to watch the baby aullador scramble inside the rice sack, and being happy to watch the wild troupe take him back up into the trees. attempting to understand the social class balancing act I have found myself inside. angelito, gisela, moises, deci, jonathan, andrade, and duana. being escorted down a dark dirt road by a parade of small children. bear hugs from lorena. cooking beans in hostel kitchens. fumigation headaches. being not-so-terrified to give speeches, in spanish, in front of more than 100 people at the town meeting. helping to begin an environmental association, and calling for the vote. hummingbirds, and mosquitos, and camarones del rio. camarones al ajillo. contemplating the loss of memory while watching the coast blur by on a bus. rancheros and the wind. riding in the backs of giant red pickup trucks after rainstorms. spontaneous freestyle jam sessions on the beach, at 3 in the morning, with harmonica mac and joe’s guitar. being awake by 730. hearing news of a massacre, and feeling my lungs collapse from remembering how it is to be stunned, claustrophobic, of needing to be elsewhere and not being able to get there fast enough. drinking tea beneath the trees. free grapefruit, oranges, maracuya, and watermelon. conversations about soul with the lanky longboarder [ how it can get lost in LA and how there is more in the california waters, and why walking on the tips of the waves is more than just a meditation on the impossibilities of eternity]. three, or north through manabi. inappropriately comical situations. beach writing. reading the lorax. the parrots in the menagerie (how many birds have died in cages, thinking the ceiling was the sky?) galloping. watching “the thin red line” in a party bar. ridiculously vivid dreams about sharks, and climbing stairwells with falling rocks, and giant tarantulas on the streets. the traveler v. the tourist, and expanding my reality. collecting new music. reading, and bawling, and being all the lighter for it. maybe thinking I know what I want to do, at least for now. making friends with fishermen, and a strange encounter with land owning, awkward English-speaking ghouls. mercedes, and her artesanian heart (she calls me “mi hija”). vultures on the cross in pedernales. the hanging of the red plastic chair. everything is dissolving.

a collection.
way down deep (past the light and the sound, where the squid and the whale fight battles in the dark) this is where our dreams go in the morning. our eyes open, and they float, like plastic bags with tentacles and moving metal parts. as they sink, they rust and scatter into bits, but only physically. they stay there forever, and when we die, we are plunged back into our forgotten, long lost subconscious thoughts. haunting? maybe, but at least it is the truth. and no one can avoid that. close your eyes, and think of all the bubbles of love you’ve made… [medusa dreams]

but what happens to people who forget each other? are there holes? like rotting windows in our solemn dreams, our salty bloody seas? gravity is infectious. the weight of it, I mean. the bodily feeling of falling, especially in water or through air, passed buildings and towers and ravines eight miles deep. the poet who wrote about the death of the flying stewardess (1968) caught in photographic words our human obsession with the war against the weight of the earth. to fight, and fail – to flail and cease endlessly – is such an ugly truth, but at the same time, horribly delicately beautiful. is this wondering, this desire to test fate, and flight, why some choose to jump without a parachute? I wish their final thoughts were made into documentaries and broadcast in 8 mm silent frames on the walls of subway stations, like a fleeting glimpse of their eternal struggle, caught in flickers of light on the cement. [for existing in the first place]

you’ve got me by the hand and I can’t quite remember the sensation of being alone of how to stand this vertigo its got me hanging on with both hands (to your untouchable face) and how I can’t remember why we even existed in the first place

there are ants in my pants, or ants in my shoes; ants in my shoes and my pants and the grooves (between your nightmare necessity needing, and my absolute apathy towards disaster). what a place, what a sound they must make, if we set them ablaze from our match burning betting. I sink heavy in mud, in barbed wire mud, loaded with rain and the awareness of fear. my feet carry me through doors, and windows, and walls, but one candle bright cannot compete with them all. careful where you step my friend, my lover of light, and I’ll carry you there on my back, in my bones. I’ll carry you anywhere – your heart is my home. [careful there]

I’m done leaning over my shoes; out over the ocean and singing the blues. and why for this within, can I find no without? but for the searching the rocks are crumbling, and I can’t say that I haven’t always been this way; we are from another time, you and I; our bones are from the sea but at their depths only where the light comes from the enigmatic glowing. where time has not yet reached (and so it is nearly one hundred years before). are the fishes lonely in their vacuum, missing the movement of the soul as it grows older? [rainer on the point]

breathe breathe breathe. ocean. breathe. ocean, breathe. ocean ocean ocean. breathe. ocean. breathe breathe.

this ink is everywhere.

two sides of the abyss not given a page a photograph or a paragraph written to claim them at 7th and Jackson the microphone’s open the moment of the music never will you see me be a judas to the movement used to be a student of the beat until I mastered it and then I set it free to be let it be the energy. . .
the blue scholars, [evening chai]