As a Result, Because, Although, Despite

This was inspired, once again (in a small way) by the lovely Wislawa Szymborska who apparently died February 1st this year...and I didn't know. I am ashamed to call myself a lover of her poetry. -head hanging-
You will see references to Peter Pan and babies and William Blake's well-known poem "TIGER, tiger, burning bright." This is ironic, because I detest that poem for reasons only I know. Enjoy. (It's too frickin' looooong)




My closet-clutter clings to the walls bare-boned, knobble-kneed, coat-hangers hanging like a warning sign of something painful: nails in the ceiling, shoes dangling.
It clings --
-not as a marsupial [wide-eared Koala; jumping Joey] suckles the pocket; the way an opossum digs in close for the roller coaster ride, prehensile tails flailing for gravity.
-not as if it were a dirty, pigmented ovulation lashed to my soft v-shaped cocoon; cramped-up, anchored by detrimental blood flow: inconsistent coagulations without regulations.

No, my house lives in quixotic, quivery trepidation that one day soon I will push up from the ground hard, shove my pleasurables and necessities-of-living into one black garbage-bag, and stride into the lancing-glare, a coffee-to-go in hand. My shadow will be the only one who looks back, missing the warmth and comfort of darkness; of hiding in drawers until daybreak, being sewn tight [taut] back onto my heels with needle and thread, tested for durability. Out on the streets, existence is mandatory until day's end, and even then, I will wrap it around my shoulders to keep warm when vultures peck at my bones.

One by one, slowly by slower, objects and affectionates are losing their weight (in my heart) and evaporating out of sight and sound. [The house! The house! Floorboards burning bright! Books seeping through the foundations and guitars disappearing into dissonance.] The closet is closing with a clatter, boxes buried beneath baggy clothing, pencils seeping into the cracks, unsharpened. Memories are stuffed into the sleeves of envelopes and overcoats, grasped by the wall's children and then hidden away to keep for later, when the stupor breaks like the sweat of destruction and I weep for what I have deleted into dis-/anti-/non-existence.

Oh, the house! The bed is dipping lower than usual, groveling on its knees for me not to leave like the spring breeze; the desk drawers are locking like land, like lips, unwilling to relinquish their treasures to my nuclear [winter] fingers. Apparently fallout inflicts the greatest danger on papers; portfolios languishing in radio-activity. (Swab it down, swab it down! Burn it all to the ground!)

Piece by piece, article by particle, my pointless possessions and trifles are carted away in birthday-present surprises, going-away nonchalantes, and letters to the wasteland: home. I can't remember when, but somewhere between I-don't-know-what-I-want-to-be-when-I-grow-up and I-can't-remember-who-I-was-when-I-was-younger, I let life pick-pocket me of my understanding of worth, and gave up on things. If a heavy backpack to drag your feet and a roof to smother you is what constitutes a life - a culmination of things through countless years of want - then I will gladly shrug it from my shoulders and sell it for a shadow that doesn't leave me [in the dark.]

They explained the warning signs in psychology class [precursors to something painful]: nooses in the ceiling, bodies dangling. The shunting-around of belongings is apparently an obvious/major indicator; the dissolution of everything that chains ties you to the earth.

House! Oh, house! Windows burning bright! I do not wish to end my life! For sure, sometimes I wish to leave it -- some days I pack a bag just to feel the tingle in my heels; snap closed my guitar-case just to test the weight of music on my arms, to see how far I could carry it in a moment of dubious need.

Oh closet! Give up my bits and bobbins! Hiding them will not keep me from waking and departing if I so desperately wish to. Things can be replaced, left behind, locked in a safe to keep them sheltered from "safety." If you wish to restrain me - prevent me - then by all means, closet, hang my shoes up high and drown my keepsakes in the monotonously-mundane, but nothing will ever truly stop me.

I have a wandering soul sole. Twist and trample my neck and I will stand, clawing my way up; steal my socks and I will trudge along, wincing all the way; misplace my scribbles and attempts at storytelling and I will simply rewrite, bleeding anew.

Oh closet that clings to such clutterous-memories! I may be a foal; just born, wet and soft-boned. But I will flop-flip-trip-stumble my legs under me. I will flee from what tantalizes and tries to break me.

Non Omnis Moriar

Who the hell is John?! I don't even know a John!



John, I fear I have forgotten how to
lift myself over the rail,
or possibly I am losing
the ocean inside my ear canal.


Last night, as the fever gathered,
I wrapped myself in Leaves of Grass
- closed myself deep into the cracks
to avoid the feeling -
and watched Venus revolving
around drifting meteors.
[Oh, Whitman, what is the grass?
A scented gift of so many uttering tongues?
Perhaps the hieroglyphic of humanity and the morrow;
the uncut, green bandage of graves?]
Seedless, I sway, and
it makes me feel so hopeless
ly-hopeful, so cut off and complacent, that
I take enjoyment from watching rockets
blast holes in the sun.
Nothing ever lasts long, anyway.

Achromatic, I paint out the pain.
I want to write short things - concise, easy things -
but I don't seem capable.
I find inspiration in too many
things at once, and I am so frustrated with
my quavering eyes [causing ripples that eradicate the world.]
I just want to
scribble out plotless, unintelligent things without
necessity - curled in the cove,
in the dark,
in the gate between hemispheres:
delving.

Windless, I stay shoulder to
shoulder, unbowing, misleading.
I'm tired - sick to death - of people lip-reading the
rough drafts I will never send;
opening empty envelopes with crumbling
flower-stems, and seeking
symbolism. There is nothing there!

Everybody wants to know when/why I am.
I'm a writer so I must be a genre, a novel,
a period placed just out of touch.
But I am not Edwin Denby or Szymborska
or Whitman. I am not a notebook filled
with "existentialist" poetry; a pocket book of
verse, scarred by annotations.
If I remember correctly,
I am me - a fucking human being -
not a copy.
At least, that's how I used to be.

Heedless, I sway with leaves in hand.
{Wislawa, do your people's poets write in mittens?
La Pologne? Isn't it terribly cold there?}
Needlessly, I break off a strand, breathe
it in, not bothering to read into it.
[What is the grass, Mr. Whitman?
Is it a song of myself, or of
yourself? Or is it everyone everywhere
all at once?]


John, I fear I have lost
the ocean inside the shell,
or possibly I am forgetting how to
lift myself over the rail [and fall.]

Someone Told Me, Long Ago

Place your hands against the window,
lips too, and breathe -
       open the floodgates, insufflate, respire;
       chest expanding like a hot-air balloon, lifting
       you off the ground, head spinning.
Perhaps you will feel the water-vapor condensing
and see the chill dewing-up
before you see it clouding the surface;
before you feel it ice-cold against your cheek
sending creeping-vines up your body:
      Winter's dainty fingers. Jack's frosty paintings:
      trembling letters and shivering words dripping into
      disappearance, cold as liquid nitrogen.
For a moment, allow yourself to feel alive
and here, because it is fleeting. Hold on until there's
nothing left but breathlessness.
Can you feel its pane?
      -Cool as the underside of a pillow,
      insubstantial as early-morning ideas:
      the ghosts of thoughts, unprotected, unedited.
Lay your head back, go on,
and just let your body be involuntary for a while.

Kiss the glass, and wonder:
does the window keep us in,
or the world out?

John

This....is fiction and nonfiction.
{I'm so sick of people always pitying those with problems, like handicaps; yes, empathy and compassion are fine, they're necessary and wanted. But, honestly, in the end, everyone just wants it to be fair; everyone wants a chance to do something themselves. Fighting and losing makes us fight.}


I raced a crippled boy today,
out in the sun,
bet him ten green bottle-caps his legs
weren't dead, had simply forgotten the thrill
of flight: the fight.
And out in hotter-than-hell heat,
he dumped his safety brakes
and I dumped my sneakers,
and together we hit the pavement running;
hindered by wheelchairs and blistering feet.

For thirty-seven seconds we were equals;
two people strung up in a too-loose noose of hope,
released by an opportunity.
It was three blocks of screaming, screeching,
agonized agony for both of us,
and I'm sure my feet will never feel again;
just like his legs, suspended before him.

The whole neighborhood came out to watch,
lawn chairs and lemonade and all,
and I flat-out ignored them.
Their anger washed over me,
but I simply said "Your legs aren't dead, John. Nothing is ever truly dead,
just sleeping -- soundlessly."
All that disbelieving-rage beaded up like sweat
and erupted through the crowd,
but we ran
and ran, laughing and wincing the whole way.

I crossed the finish line first: three feet ahead,
and they all yelled and booed,
but that crippled boy? He just rolled up and beamed.
"Maybe next time," he said, smiling.

Maybe next time.


{John, I happen to agree.}

600968888

I ask you: Can you combobulate, or is it always the anti-?



It could have happened.
Nearby. Farby?
Under that red umbrella that
bled onto your shoulders in the rain
[oh, what a trifle -- said in chagrin.]
Dear, it matters not here or
between the pages of that unread novel
under your laundry pile, underfoot,
tainted with mustard stains and lip-gloss (darling,
I don't wear any, but I could if you want me to.
Do you prefer strawberry kisses to peppermint?)
It matters not how strait the gate…
Ten o'clock, 17 seconds before the let down
- shut down - face down -- hiding, lying:
lies that articulate the truth.

It could have happened.
Should've, would've,
as you bunny-ear tied those tennis shoes;
tongue-tied [nonono, Darren, not with me.
Mouth wash is best used in excess,
because, oh boy, we need to extinguish that
cesspool of a salivary-gland.]
It matters not.
~They Might Be Giants:
(a) view with a grain of sand.
It will not be defined,
and, therefore,
is and shall not.

Dear, am I cynical enough,
or need I be more confounding - conniving - confusing?
Connoisseur of conjuncture.
I am anagrammically correct - aim; incorrectly anagrammed -
and full of the laughters to be: giggles, chuckles, chortles;
addled, adenoidal, adherent to sound.
(Un-discombobulate that, silly boy.)
Do not fear, dear.
It's a lot harder than it looks to ad-lib like this;
cynicisms sashaying off my lips. Add the fact that
math is my anti-specialty, and we have ourselves
a humdrum conundrum -- say that 5 times fast.
I'd say you should stick it in your pipe and smoke it,
but, together, we already have too many bad habits.
So stick it in your bum-freezer [oh, don't look at me like
that, darlin', it's a coat.]

The point is that it could have happened.
And it did, but also didn't.
The point is that there is none and also are,
and my fingers know the stakes of such a high wager;
talking nonsense to total strangers, anagrams be damned.
No one hears the numbers any more, darlin',
and that's why the white man always wins the war:
no one challenges the belonging!
Assimilation's the word [bird]:
integration and segregation come hand-in-hand,
though you can't let them drink from the same water fountain.
Trust me, it's already happened and, therefore,
will never and will again.
Uh-oh! Eustace, we have a problem; not a Hubble,
but a whole lot o' rubble.
Fuck! I need a T-chart, pronto.

Don't look at me like that, darlin'.
It all makes sense if you know the definition,
and if you know,
you'll know there is no definition.
70 times over - over-used - used-to-flavor:
limits - limitations - limitlessness.
A chicken knows the walls of its shell
like a beggar knows its cell
[food and sleep are the best bargaining chips:
don't forget the candlesticks, Valjean.]
"If you're hiding in the dark, no one's gonna find ya,"
and it definitely could have happened
nearby and farby.
I'd tell you, but I'd have to kill you.
If I spoke then it would be words,
and words are defining as hell,
and definitions mean limitations,
and, oh boy, this has no limits:
like evil.

I use numbers instead of words
because the computer understands me
and I'm inebriated by insanity.
Barack and Mr. Mitten - bar fights - barometers -
bar codes: numbersnumbersnumbers in our arms
because names are useless and limitless things limited.
Aim at 600968888 -- that's me. What's your dehumanization,
and has it happened yet?

If you have to ask,
you will never know.

on breaking your neck.

I hurt myself, but now I'm [mostly] better. I can get up now, which is nice, since lying in bed and staring at the ceiling is NOT very much fun, let me tell you. I attempted to write this while lying down, but writing it very difficult when you can't sit up or raise your arms over your head, so, mostly, I just repeated it over and over in my head to memorize it for later. It didn't work. I forgot most of it. So here's my other version.

Don't worry. I like to make things seem much worse than they are. I'm a wimp like that. But, really, it's a scary thing not being able to move. You don't realize how much you rely upon movement to live until...you can't. I thought I was paralyzed.



I rolled over
and snapped:
clean,
like a candy-cane.
--Right in the crook;
in that tender,
delicate
place,
held together [dangling uselessly]
by thin strips of
plastic.

If I was
plastic,
I would not break
so easily.
I would crinkle and
crease: fold.
Oh, please believe me:
I am not so
    weak;
vulnerable and
sweet
as they say.

I woke up
as my body
fell asleep down:
sleepily.
Like a tulip
against the elements,
I forgot to close
up
and zip shut
my faults [lips, legs,
eyes plastered with
moon-shine.]
I caught too much
water in the spa
ces between blinks,
and the rain?
It broke me.

My head lays[broken]
demented,
catawampus,
catatonic,
and my body is somewhere
down
there [at least, I hope so]:
petrified; plastic limbs
boneless, joint-less.
But I can wiggle my toes.
Oh god,
I can wiggle my toes,
and believe me,
     that means I'm alive.


I may be alive,
but that soft,
tender
place at the
base
of my skull
cracked
[like the tip of
my last fucking reed]
and now all I can do
is try not to
black-
out,
because my shoulders
feel much too
fragile
to support
gravity
and my head is
lulling about
unsustainably.


I don't know
how to feel more
useless.

Appoggiatura

I wrote the first sentence about a month ago, while sitting in the car at the beach. Finally got around to finishing it. Hmm...I'm moderately pleased. At least I finally found a use for my immense musical vocabulary.



Writing -
not a creation
but a translation.
Emotions made tangible -- legitimized.
Music manipulated into syllables; staff and key signatures
stretched in line breaks and semicolons; melodies thrumming
like fingers on a typewriter: 16th note runs, breath ^, marks,
and tri-pl-et quarters.


Whisper sharps and flats [accidentals] like poetic-license; throw pens down
in anger and slash out entire phrases: repeat(s). Return to the beginning and twist
the laws, because limitations were made to be tested.
Speak l e g a t o s
and staccatos through double-reed lips [slender, smooth sentences curling around
mouthpieces, churning beneath your fingers, convoluting and spiraling into fragments.
Choppy bits of fever.]
The spaces between ledger lines are all that's needed to
fill the silence between enharmonic screams;
a sigh of air; a rich naissance of sound [oaken]:
bass clef, bold; baritone, bisbigliando.


As a writer,
you are a mere support; a composer.
In essence [at heart] a rhythmic bass-line
tying the music together, omniscient, overseeing:
10 measures and the sounds take over - take flight -
take their own road, and all that's left to do is keep up.
You are an appoggiatura:
a flick of the fingers, an eighth-note abbreviated;
graceful, then gone.
But your writing is a symphony;
a sonata, lulling late at night;
sometimes just a melodic line [2 measures, 8 notes]
that makes me shiver like all those tremolos dotting my waist.


Part your aperture lips against mine;
Bb fingers brushing my cheek: two-fingered caesura.
Take me to the Coda and let's diminish to a niente.
Make me forget I'm out of tune.

Encephalo-

Choose your ending, go ahead. Perhaps -clastic, or maybe -pathy?
Some days are bad days, and sometimes people can't seem to accept that I speak through my writing;
that communication has always been slightly difficult for me anyways; and sometimes even simply putting things into words is difficult enough to land me flat on my back.



Shadows cascade through the open window;
steely fingers of moonlight slipping across the floor,
reaching under furniture and stealing scraps
of daylight leftover from noon.
Dust covers everything like filter paper,
smelling stagnant and viscously-thick; hanging
like cobwebs in the air: a colloid suspended in water.
Every couple minutes,
the roof makes a noise like rain,
and the clouds snap apart like Lincoln-Logs.

I sit in bed, the blankets furled around me
like stalwart arms, and try to hold it all in.
Light is beckoning outside my door
and, somewhere, a cat is scratching and yowling
to be let in from the cold,
but I can't uncurl. I am fetal again, my limbs boneless
and malleable, plastered to this body that only has a heart
(that's it.)
Drums are beating in my ears still; the sound of trumpet fanfares
cracking like puberty snaps vocal-c(h)ords, and trombones;
oh, those trombones sliding: all those glissandi;
music like inner tubes filling [water dripping onto pudding.]

Ghosts are rattling the closet doors now,
but I'm too apathetic to be afraid.
All I can feel is the yoop;
the hiss and strangle: gurgle, gasp
of sobbing [your lungs leaking.]
My mind is breaking because all these sentences
need to be written so they can leave. So I can bury them
in a mass grave like all those oh-so-terrible/horrible/horrendous casualties;
so I can forget about all these "brilliant" things I have to say
because they just can't be put into words, okay? There are some things
not even you could say.

And the mo(u)rning train trundles by,
making the silverware tremble in its drawer;
the weather worsening like a forte-piano -- sudden crescendo;
like a hurricane opening its eye to survey the damage and grinning
[mouth full of houses.]
Snow flurries beg me to dance,
but I can't uncurl. I am fetal again, living on a lifeline
of graphite and will (oh-so-badly malnourished)
and I have to hold it all in.
I stare at the planes of my hands and know:
oh dear, I have to contain this.

Oh god, I can't contain this.

Nameless Thing

Something similar (but not really) to Day In and Day Out. Written on the same napkin.
I'm not sure I like how this turned out, but considering that it started out as a run-on sentence that took up two whole pages, I'd say it's an improvement, at least.


I've sat at this café so long that the waitress is starting to wonder
who this strange person is at table six who puts creamer in her
coffee and then forgets to stir it every time.
[She knows when it's time for a refill because that last sip
comes with a wince and a snarking-back of cold coffee-grinds.]
The cook's been out twice to catch a glimpse of this mysterious customer
who only orders condiments and utensils, and writes
synonyms for "synonym" in the window haze,
watching the I's cry.

I lean my chin in my hand and watch the world;
listen to the click of heels on linoleum,
the slamming shut of windows and descending-swish of blinds.
It's all just so mundane.
I wish to hear the music again; the metaphors and anecdotes:
babble translating to verse.

The man at the table next to me knits;
the muscles in his arms throbbing to the drone and jumble
of dishwashers and air-conditioners.
Music notes lay buried in his fingertips,
inked into his flesh, most likely, during a bout of alcoholism.
I wonder if he even knows what they mean,
or if he simply wrote FACE on his knuckles for the irony.

A family sits at the middle booth, and I can tell by the body language
that the husband is having an affair (probably with a pretty, young blonde)
and the wife knows but will never say, and the oldest daughter is anorexic
but only the carrot sticks know (and they're slowly being consumed: boiled and tasteless).
And the little boy? He's rambling about skipping-stones and redwood trees this big around,
and sea lion caves without end - full of crab shells -
but no one's listening and it makes me so sad
watching, because they are one child short and nobody notices.

"There is a child missing!" I want to scream. A little girl: stolen by sneaker-waves.
But I just sit there, swirling Tabasco around in its bottle,
and pretend that I can't notice that hole in the fabric:
a little girl missing, buried in a dark lonely hole,
remembered only by the flowers rotting next to her tombstone
because pictures of Easter-egg hunts and Fourth of Julys are just too painful
and moving on is so much easier than lingering.

My hands are shaking and the waitress is wondering
if she should call Officer Bailey or cut off my coffee,
and the rain outside is making all of us wish we could curl up
in a gulley somewhere and swim down the hillside
because it's all just so mundane.
I'm organizing the jams and jellies by the shape of the container
and the number of unpronounceable ingredients,
and trying not to see (with insight) that there are holes in everything.

But everyone can see it:
the empty feeling in the mother's womb (longing to cradle that baby until it's safe again),
the father's vacant arms (wishing for one more chance: one more opportunity to
fly that toddler under the covers, tuck her in tight),
the sister's shrinking stomach (wanting to be less than substance, smaller even
than that sister sleeping in the earth, locket in her hand.)
What's saddest, is that the little boy is too young.
He won't sense what's missing until later,
when home videos are suddenly stopped-short or fast-forwarded,
and postcards resurface, signed by one too many children.
And then it will be too late; the ground will have forgotten the
fingers of the shovel, and moss will sleep in the hollows of her name.

"There is something missing", I want to whisper as I watch the world,
but no one's listening and it's really just too mundane.
No one else sees the fractal spiraling like a double helix: reeling, unwinding;
the holes in the fabric of reality:
tiny perforations where children should be (laughs and smiles missing
like baby-teeth) making the sky tremble with night;
pin-pricks with anti-gravity leaking through
like the negatives of stars.

In a Trice

Trice means "very quickly" or "in a moment". Does that mean that my title is really: "In a In a Moment"? Because that's just...tautological.
I read the dictionary on Monday when I was supposed to be working on my State Writing Test.
I wrote this in Chemistry today when everyone else was taking a test but I wasn't because I'm not that smart. :)  I seem to have become very philosophical recently.


Moments-
time: tick-tock, tick-tock;
windscreen wipers flick-click, flick-clicking
to the tempo of bouncing feet;
water-droplets running off sunroofs - seconds
lost, forsaken, sold for pennies and left on
street corners for bums and duffers to pluck
like dandelions. Scattered like wishes in a well;
one thousand tiny prayers (lips kissing copper, words whispered:
"please…just please") left to drown
and tarnish like so many other symbols of hope
- the Lady Liberty cries: long, dark rust-streams permeating
because of all of this hatred and nobody caring.
What about the people with nothing?!

Moments-
time: wasted because oh, you're only seventeen.
What if I told you
you die at eighteen? Would life suddenly seem worthwhile?
You'd most likely sell it; barter off a year
for one last fling, one final hoo-ha before the inevitable end.
Well listen to the drumbeats, little man! They're not chasing;
they're following. Time doesn't ebb and flow
like the tides; it is uncontrollable. It is you that
fades in and out of existence, one foot poised on the doorstep.
Sit still, stay, for god's sake: listen!
Pause, and watch as life passes you by,
because it will be more beautiful in that instant (a single, tangible moment)
than anything you have ever seen before.
Why is life so much more precious when
it is ending?

Word of Mouth

I wrote this at two in the morning at my sister's house. Yeah. :D


That boy had a face like a bar fight;
purple and blue fist-depressions in his cheekbones,
slits in his lips like lines in a tree;
cuts like notches in a stick:
counting down time left, time wasted,
and all the times he's woken up with a murderous headache.
There's something sticky on his chin [probably gin]
where a beard should be,
but he's much too young, much too innocent
to have one,
even though he spends his nights "out-on-the-town",
pretending he's tough and mysterious and handsome,
buying lap dances with money reserved for booze.
You can see him begging on the street for a sip of something [anything]
at the first break of twilight,
groveling in front of complete strangers, face full of blood and mud,
because, oh look, his hands are quaking with seismic activity
and he's sinking like the Titanic (head-first into the gutter.)
Ain't withdrawal a bitch?

Once upon a time,
he started this as a way of searching,
though he forgot what it was he was looking for
after that first morning he woke up
with his chin on the toilet and drool dangling:
green and smelling of prostitute.
Now he just goes for the familiarity;
the numbing of everything as the world undulates
like a roller coaster falling off its tracks,
the flash-flicker of feeling deep in his loins
as a girl winks from across the room.
"Hey, hooooooney. Fancy meetin' you here."
There's a bruise above his left eye,
two permanent dark circles:
a five-fingered tattoo of shame.
Rejection painted black-and-blue across his cheek.

He watches the universe flit past without him, as he sits:
perched on his stool in the corner, hunkered down over
his last cup of scotch. If you kissed him, he would taste like bitterness, and
rancid mouthwash, and hogwash. When he's hammered, he's on the ground, girl,
so you better hail a cab, or just leave him;
he won't remember you anyways.

A shadow passes over his eyes sometimes,
when he's halfway through his third drink
and the buzz of conversation is morphing to
the slow purl of a river;
faces rippling pale and blue.
He's washed up and singing his little chantey,
an arm around Buttercup or perhaps Daisy,
and he catches a glimpse of his face
all bloodied and notched like a burn-victim.

In the reflection of a shot glass,
he watches his life flee from him
like car headlights flitting over a window:
blink, and you just might catch a glimmer
behind your eyelashes.

Think About It.

I'm being ruthless with my writing again;
slitting open lines like tissues and transplanting
them onto paper plates,
cradling nouns gingerly in my palm
as if they were someone's heart or kidneys
(hot and still [dimly] pumping).
I'm a writer, not a surgeon:
I may not be able to clear ventricles and
remove tumors,
but I can preserve the people I love in the pages
of my notebook, press words like decaying flowers between
my palms.
I may not be a surgeon, but I can save people.

They called me a pretentious bitch;
a nerd without even the common courteously to
wear glasses (so I can at least look intelligent.)
Apparently, formulating an atypical lexicon and
utilizing a dictionary makes you a freak.
They hate that I know the difference between breath and breathe
off the top of my head (one is a verb and the other is a noun, idiots.)

I'm sitting in a lawn chair watching the rain pour
beyond the edge of my shelter;
drawing a shivering hand through my hair
and breathing out a hot breath of steam into the air.
With my sticky red pen, I make another incision in the paper;
angrily crossing out whole sections, and scribbling out adjectives,
because no one nowadays wants to read all those extra words
that I love so dearly.
I am only a writer after all.

I'm just a freakish little girl who once
read the dictionary cover-to-cover,
and speaks like an english teacher: spinning similes
around her pinkie finger.
I'm just a pretentious bitch
who says things like "the banality of evil"
and "the timbre of your instrument is aesthetically-pleasing";
who straddles the line between
reality and insanity like a funambulist,
because sometimes she forgets how to spell judgement (judgment),
but can easily define hypertrophy cardiomyopathy
because she wrote a fucking poem about it.
I am just a writer
who uses manifold words to convey
acute things.
I write with obscure references
and carry a thesaurus in my back pocket,
but I've realized that I just don't care.

I'm hanging upside down from my roof
to get a different perspective on the ground
and all the cerebrospinal fluid is rushing to my head;
tomorrow I will teach myself to write with my right hand
so I can be ambidextrous (and write twice as fast),
and I don't care if that's weird.
It's who I am,
and I don't care about your floccinaucinihilipilification
(yes, I can use that in a sentence and in relation to you),
because you consider words to be weightless
in a world where language is the focal point of
existence.

everything is under control

Disclaimer: please ignore all bad-language, references to drinking and/or smoking, and any other such unfavorable content. I could/would edit it, but I'm seriously so tired right now. I really need REM sleep tonight, so here it is raw and real. It's all about being alive, bros. Go with the flow.
--I do not and never will smoke cigarettes. My mind was going a mile a minute, so I went with it, and this is what came out of it. Deal with it. The only true part of this is probably the thing about the socks (my guitar picks love them)...and the banana-seat, because, come on, those things were the bomb.

4/9/12


He makes me want to smoke clove cigarettes
[daintily], with one pinky sticking out,
like I'm drinking tea out of a cup and saucer
{and maybe I am.}
You can't drink a cappuccino
without something sweet,
and, oh man, do I crave that sweetness;
a potent last sip of chai (the final tart swallow)
when all the extract is at the bottom.
It reminds me of licorice wrapped in printer paper;
of chain-smoking words;
of the times when I was innocent and curious
and didn't know that even simply breathing could kill you.
Every second, we move closer to our eventual demise, they tell
me with gleeful [masochistic] eyes;
every minute, 108 people die.
Somehow, this fails to make me feel better.

I'm going stir-crazy
waiting for some light to appear.
Nothing romantic,
just enough to write by;
to exist by.
All I need is something that leaves a mark,
and nothing else;
by now, I'm used to messy chirography [misspelled because
where the fuck is my dictionary?] and use-
less line bre
aks that mean
absolutely nothing in the great scheme of things
(except that I can't see worth a damn
by flashlight…light?)

In the darkness,
I fumble for my guitar
and try to tune it by ear, though it matters not.
A [sharp] G string makes me remember the
feel of buttons pushing through holes
and the smell of laundry detergent.
Once, I washed all of our clothing together,
and now all my jeans pockets are the
color of his favorite socks
(rainbow, without polka dots.)
All my guitar picks hid when he left; buried
themselves deep in his socks, snuggly warm,
and I secretly hope that they impaled him.

I think I got addicted to the idea of
addiction, and now I have to spike my caffeine
with nicotine just to feel alive and jittery and dangerous.
Inhalations burn like acid and anecdotes;
tar bubbling, blooming in my lungs,
seeping up my esophagus as I cough and
hack up earl gray [laced with bourbon] into the shower.
At least I have an excuse now to forget
I can't drive;
to ponder
the purpose of a poem (if it has one)
out in the early morning haze, wearing only
a night gown and my skin;
to believe against all doubt that candles
are flickering in the walls, when it is just
my eyelids drooping [closed.]
A reason to be as ridiculous as possible,
because they already think I'm crazy or insane
(I never do anything the right way.)

He makes me want to tear my shirt
from my torso, and bare my collarbones to the harsh
light; grip them like I'm going along for a ride on his
handlebars again, like when we were twelve and having
a banana-seat meant you were king of the jungle-jim.
But it's all just a ruse -- a lie:
together, we've hit the iron railing and are jolting forward,
but it is only me, (un)balanced precariously
as his human shield, that crashes into the brick wall
and leaves a water mark on the concrete.

I want to chain smoke with him, out behind the east locker rooms
[warily], with one hand on my backbone
(the only thing structurally-sound I trust now),
but I'm not even sure what that means, and, really,
my alveoli are virgins; if they tasted tobacco
it would likely kill them right then and there.

He makes me want to run
full-tilt, flat-out: sprint,
so the air rushing in will be oh-so-much-more
precious than the air rushing out.
I want to smoke a damn cigarette
so I know what it feels like to taste fate
and fuck with death.

So I can lie [awake],
wondering why I only cry with the lights on;
why I only like him when I'm alone.

The Truth Is Quite Pointless

Last night, I suffered a mental explosion.

I drank ten times too much coffee (about 5-6 cups, which actually isn't much considering how much I USUALLY drink at my dad's house on weekends i.e. 2 pots per day, but apparently it was too much for yesterday) and then I spent the entirety of my sleepy-time:
staring into space, talking to myself in english, french, and spanish, singing to myself, laughing hysterically, having caffeine-induced/too-much-energy-concentrated-in-one-body-with-no-way-to-expell-it-peacefully-at-3-in-the-morning seizures, talking to my imaginary imaginary-friends (yeah, I pretend to have pretend friends because it makes me feel like I have friends), humming, pondering the presidential candidacy, listening to the rain (it wasn't raining apparently), and mostly writing poetry that I thought would change the world with it's brilliancy and feeling empathy for question marks (they're just exclamation marks with bad backs, guys.)

With my madre sleeping down the hall, I couldn't turn my light because every time I tried to write something, she'd yell at me to turn it off because she thought I'd had it on ALL NIGHT, when in reality I had JUST TURNED IT ON, but whatever. So I couldn't turn my light on, but every time I laid down, this "amazing" "inspirational" "brilliantly insightful" poem would pop into my head, and I just HAD to write it, otherwise I'd forget.

So, first, I tried to just write it in the dark...in the PITCH dark...with a blunt wooden pencil I found under my bed...in a little itty-pitty notebook that is impossible to write in on a good day....at 2-3 in the morning. Yeah, you know that thing you do when you can't see your writing, so you just keep writing words on top of words on top of words...I did that. Then I tried to beat the system by leaving extra-big spaces between words, but then I had to use 10x the amount of baby-pages, and my handwriting was indecipherable anyways.

So, next, I decided to be a JENIUS, and sneaky-sneak into the living room where I had recently placed my little fake candles on the coffee table for when we had a power-outage. Then I sneaky-sneaked back in to my room, turned them on, and lined them up along the edge of my notebook so I could write by "candle" light. The only problem with this was that the fake candles also fake flicker, so by 5 o'clock, my eyes were seeing colors and everything was hazy.

And so, I began to scribble furiously throughout the night, wide awake, crazy with craziness, and overjoyed because "oh man, in the morning when I wake up this is going to be the best thing anyone has ever written and it's going to change lives and make everyone love me and I'm gonna be the coolest person and I'm just so insightful and awesome" and then, when I got up in the morning and reread it...well...you'll see.

Here is the first of 7-8 poems I started/wrote last night. Most of them have to do with sleeping, coffee, and manipulating language in disgusting ways. Sorry. my palette is dwindling.


Fifteen pages and still:
nothing.
I tried to find a synonym
for writer's block,
but apparently my pencil is
out of batteries
and so is my brain.

Words are churning out
ten definitions per second
and I'm so tired
I fell asleep with my head
at the wrong end of the bed,
but every time I close my eyes
there it is:
wordsverbswords.
I play word dissociation
like other people count sheep:
   flippers, flappers, flabbergast,
   gastric-bypass.
Nonchalance never did much for me,
and I think I may need medication for this
because I'm writing on the floors now
and it's carpet
(it won't last.)

It's 2:37 and I've decided
that maybe it's too late for me,
and I'm reduced to this fate
of sifting through underwear drawers
and bundling letters together with
elastic bands.

Seven hours and four pencils,
and what do I have to show
for myself?
Sixteen pages of:
nothing.
156 wasted words.
And it's not because I
can't write, no.
I'm not blocked
or verbally incapacitated.
I just have nothing at all to say;
no reason to type this out like
a pretty little manuscript;
no purpose whatsoever for my writing,
and that's probably a crime
punishable by death
in several countries,
but it's true: I don't know
what the hell I'm doing right now.

I put periods where. I want to, and

dump paragraphs right smack in the middle,
because they're tired of always
being at the beginning and the end.
[The

y
really
are

.]

And it makes me cry sometimes,
because no one cares
whether mIddLe leTtErs want to be
caPitAliZed.
And, let me tell yOu;
they DO.
      I wish we could just forgets
      grammar and structures,
      and made the language happy
      for once.


Seventeen pages and how many brain cells?
And I have absolutely
nothing at all to say:
nothing.

Day In and Day Out

This one...I don't even know what happened. Somehow I got from coffee to the 2011 Japanese earthquake, and back. Wrote this on a napkin...part one of possibly more similar ones, since this was concocted from only the first line.
Tell me how you are,
and if this makes any sense at all.
[I'm rather proud of it!]



4/6/12

I'm sitting in a café
drinking coffee like it's whiskey
and learning Japanese from the tourists
behind me.
Their accents remind me of a bowl of soy noodles:
long, thin, delicate syllables
rolling into each other;
just onelongstringofsound.
I lean back and listen,
and something in me wants to laugh
at those terracing moras [ante-penultimate, phonetic]
until I decipher the words:

    meltdowns, and Richter scales, and empty boots floating to western shores.
      It's amazing how beautiful death can be when spoken in different tongues;
      how magnificent magnitudes of destruction become
      when wrapped up in seaweed casings of Kanji and Katakana.

As I sit and stare out the window
at the pounding rain,
the world seems to unfurl
like a fortune.
All the power-lines buzz
  and
     shift
        vertical
as reflected in the oil-spill puddles;
distorted and distilled by raindrops falling like
ink from a quill.
All the people
(all those bodies)
warp and turn into caricatures--
characters;
each and every backbone a delicate line
fluttering down the page,
arms and legs and hair flowing and flickering out:
as beautiful as the written word
seeping through sheets of paper.

In the end, I realize that
we are all just language;
just sounds waiting to be uttered,
to be brought into a mouth
and turned over, tasted on the tongue,
given a breath of life:
gushing outwards,
limbs unfolding at the creases
like the delicate wings of paper-cranes.

    (Wear your fingerprints down
    hanging 1000 from the star-dappled sky,
    and the spirits dangling in lanterns outside
    your window will grant you one wish.
Whisper it
with paper-cut lips.)

Say your saving grace in
any language,
and I will scribble it in English
on the back of your napkin;
all the words torn
and running.
   Running
like whiskey spilled on your jeans
as I sit and sip my coffee.

Moisture and Steam

This one is out of order, and not very great, but oh well. Yay for showers and haikus (and the result of combining them.)


4/4/12

I wrote a little
haiku as I stretched in the
shower last night.

The walls were much too
bare and the shampoo wrote like
the ocean, scribbled

like dew (bubbling, blue.)
Words transformed, but as moisture
gathered in the cups

of my collarbones
(haphazard drizzles flowing,
dripping, flowing) I

heard something in the
echo of emptiness that
told me to breathe deep.

I swallowed a gulp
of steam and finally found
how to clear my head

when it's too full of
scribbles and crea/ses and trash-
can artwork. My fingertips

painted [felt] bruises
beneath my arms, pressing bone-
deep-green in my sides.

Water rushed over
my eyes and seconds flooded
by, and when I could

see [clearly] once more,
the shampoo was running like
pen, and all the words

were missing their--

Convince Yourself

I know I haven't posted for a while, but I'm not cheating, I swear! I may not have "finished" 7 poems by today, but I have started one every day, and I think that counts. Now I'm just going through and editing them each day so that they make logical sense. :)

When I started this....it was shorter.


4/5/12

It is the breaking of bonds:
two bodies peaking at the chest,
volatile, volcanic,
not so much sharing
as simply in the same space;
wayward arms grappling, legs flailing.
It is a pulsation of--
a remembrance and want of--
freedom:
pulling apart so hard
and ricocheting backwards.
    Footloose, spread-eagled,
    tumbling head-over-heels.
Acrobatic.

[If it were underwater, it would be a dance.
It would make the fireflies cry
that they could not be there;
could only see it (blearily) through apposition eyes,
everything convex, glittering like cobwebs:
diffracted rainbows obscuring the (re)solution.]

It is all engraved in a shudder:
a shiver, a tiny tremor
deep in the braided chords
of her espalda;
quavering like the bowels
of the farthest caverns,
stalactites vibrating with timbre.
As she buckles forward,
those rubies bulge down her seam,
those Rosetta stones divulging secrets
in long dead languages [languages never invented]
to anyone with fingers tender enough
to decode.

He is trying to restart,
to bind the laces of his sternum closed,
but it is a rabbit heart beneath the buckles,
that he coddles in the cockles
of his breast-bone.
A rabbit heart: beating so hard, so fast;
sure to rip apart.
Soon, all too soon, it will split along
its hare-line fractures like an egg,
like the tepid waters beneath his feet:
scattering with ripples and breakers.

All the animals thought it was a tsunami,
an after-effect more treacherous
than the snap:
the crack and explosion following
a severing of something.
An earthly [r]evolution that outgrew its limits;
continents and crusts splintering where
foundations weren't welded tight enough.
They all brought out their water wings
and breathed in through gillyweed lungs,
but it isn't...

It is not a collision between boundaries,
it is the subduction of things;
a dipping and crawling:
shifting.
It is a breaking of bonds:
two bodies separating at the chest,
sinews snapping like the delicate roots of trees;
thick and earthly, unrelenting,
unlacing.

It is a realization of--
an acceptance and
(in some ways) want of--



the end.



------
Some words are used incorrectly on purpose i.e. hare-line fractures....rabbit, come on.
And espalda just sounds much more elegant than spine or back.
Tectonic plates, anyone?