the messiest year in the world

seriously.


"how is the word, infinitely? i hate that word. forever. i can love forever."
12 december, 2006.

i am a techno-ballerina and this is my symphony. sympathy. symphony.
there is a sparrow in the fireplace, sitting on the piles of ash (cold for months) flying up the stairs in patches of sunlight that catch in the folds of the wrought-iron railing.
1 may, 2006.

things are precarious, and i am uneasy. but i am most loveable when i am rambling about random things that really do not connect, when i am being totally ridiculous, immediately after running when my face is flushed and i am full of energy, when you remember to ask little things that no one ever notices.
flying pink carnations, falling through the air in slow-motion, time erased.
14 february, 2006.

there is a dime in the dregs of my apple tea, and you're hiding behind the barbed wire fence that is covering the rabbit hole in your front yard. you called me alice, and i laughed, but it was bittersweet, because i spoke to the walrus the other day, and he told me there was a tea party in the abandoned hallway between your mousetrap and the laundry machine. too bad you forgot - i know the walls of your house are glass.
baby baby baby, there is nothing so fragile as me, when it comes to you. but this splinter here, spider cracked and spilling further along the side of my face, this splinter isn't made of matter, the shrapnel that you left me with. you can't call me alice anymore. there is a dime in the dregs of my apple tea, waiting to be uncovered, discovered, left in peppermint leaves.
14 october, 2006.

i want to dance. barefoot, for the rest of my life. wearing old slips, made of lace and satin [the kind the dressmakers used to place on their bodies, stiff and silent in the attic gloom;] bright red satin. or black. i will walk the curves in these roads, barefoot. letting the peculiar pieces of granite, and asphalt cling to the pads of my toes. soon, i would be three feet taller! if i didn't stop to take them out, that is. i will teach our children to climb trees (barefoot, all of us). when we reach the top, we will holler at the top of our lungs. about things like civil rights, and lung cancer, and underwear. we will scream obscenities into the wind [but only here, at the top of the world.]
27 july, 2006.

if i write it down, that means that's it. i'm done. no turning back. no ranting, no hoping, no thinking, no more. i'm done.
28 february, 2006.

bad habits die hard. summer of arms and legs entwined under a haze of blue smoke, or between sheets of seventy proof champagne skies. my hands are small and weary of being held, but from behind my back i'll let yours drift to my hips, passed my ribs, through my lungs. we're going to start a revolution, between the two of us. will you be that one i've been running towards? the one who doesn't hold on all the time?
2 september, 2006.

i came back for you, she said.
i know,
he looked at the flowers on the table - white and freshly cut. these smell horrible, he said. they smell like granite, and hospital gowns.
it was the thought that counts, kiddo, she sighed.
she hated lilies, he said.
no one but you knew that.
except for her.
except for her, she said.
they look like tumors, too. white, bulbous tumors.
she fell silent. there was nothing to say.
i didn't expect you to, come back, i mean. he said finally.
what else am i here for? she asked, and filled the room with light. he shut his eyes.
he swirled a glass of red wine and held it up, high in the air, as if he hoped, if he let it go, it might stay there, floating.
you'd have done the same, she said.
he grunted, said 'i don't know.'
true, she said.
the chiming of seventeen individual grandfather clocks echoed in his head, interrupted by the slow, wheezing gasp of the closing of a screen door.
he followed her into the street. i'm sorry, he said.
don't be, she said. sit in the dark for a while. i'll leave the light on for you.
5 august, 2006.

these tired eyes, that pirate smile; we were always good at being tired; he stays still; tight tight tight; body to body, he never stays still.
30 december, 2006.

crazy german ladies hiding yelling dogs following english toffee with the milwaukee folk. tornado warnings, lightning billowing, brewers games michaelangelos and the chocolate shoppe, and the squid and the whale, all over and everywhere. cacciato at the union in the mornings and by the fiberglass muralled cows, dance parties in the kitchen [FAKIN AMNESIA] james brown and rhythm is a dancer, singing soulful in the stairwell, the messiest orange in the world, and a mouse in the frying pan.
4 june, 2006.

you do what you can | when you can | why you can. | and when you can't | you can't.
23 september, 2006.

"now you just look over there, a'right? anything the matter, bru? yah yah. . . and if you ever threaten my life like that again, my friend, i'll peal your face back off your 'ead."
i'm yelling! i'll drown you out. you'll drown me out.
life is like the surf, so give yourself away like the sea.
28 december, 2006.

reading poetry in the morning. peanut butter and jelly. sudden violin outbreaks which sound like wailing after i've drawn on my toes and spoken to a pair of old men in houndstooth bowler hats and matching (each other, not the hats), decided to continue dancing wherever possible, regardless of the threats from mental health workers. love, whenever possible. love HARD and often.
13 january, 2006.

oh, this time we'll be infinite.
but not, like you said.
not forever.
that's too much time. it's just that the bound(arie)s will hold us down, and for
the time it takes to cross the space
we're in
we'll be infinite.
29 november, 2006.

the truth hurts. so we lie.
4 march, 2006.

we sit in the coffee shop, surrounded. on the couch, there is a man and a woman. she lays her head on his shoulder, talking straight into his ear. everyonce in a while, she flings her head sideways, her bouncy brown curls sliding across the rosy peach of her cheeks. she continues to chatter, laughing and explaining about how some man on the bus asked her where she'd gotten her boots (which are black and pointed, making click-clack sounds which echo on the tile when she walks) could she tell him where to find them? his wife would like them. she laughs when she tells her man this story, her arm pressed between his and his ribs, her hand resting quietly on his thigh. she laughs because she is comfortable in her love.
but he is not paying attention, watching instead the woman across from them, alone at a table reading a newspaper over her black-rimmed glasses. he does not love the woman who laughs.
17 november, 2006.

big things are occurring, and i don't even know if they're phasing me enough as they should. cliff jumping with the sidewalk revolutionaries of the yellow traffic lights (aka: the dead rabbits). el presidente (amsterdam), the secretary of war, the personal assassin, the secretary of propaganda, rocco, and i (the muse, the speechwriter)
the voice of pacifism in the chaos of anarchy.
3 august, 2006.

i am in espresso, and through the frame of the front windows, the overture centers' doors reign over the street. there is a line of men on bicycles, waiting for the stoplight in front of them to signal that they are free to go. one of them is looking down at his hand, wondering whether he will need to buy new gloves before winter's end. these men are splayed against the backdrop bricks of the building behind them, ivory and cream colored stone that reminds the busses not to exhale too much dust into the air. the stoplight turns green, and they are gone.
13 december, 2006.

you're singing, but i can't hear a word that you're saying.
it's all like a caucaphony of words, words and jumbled up birds
in my ears.
they're falling like glass through that turquoise blue lava you're spewing
true
why can't i hold on to you?
just let me sleep for a while, and maybe i'll hear what you're singing.
maybe i'll hear every word that you're praying...
25 march, 2006.

sepia tone loving. champagne. speaking in letters, and smoking out windows, and sailing into fits of giggles. charlie the unicorn. waking up in hotels, slipping in and out of sleep. coffee shop goodbyes. love HARD and often.
1 january, 2007.


seriously!