| you can and you cannot |
[03 Nov 2009|01:49pm] |
i think that if i swim to the bottom i could
push through it, white and light,
it would give if i tried, watching my shadow swim, i could
break through the water to space, my feet staying anchored behind
growing wrinkled, dry chlorine skin, waiting for me to see the stars
and come home
try
just one fluid motion, i just want a little grace
leave this body behind and move like an after thought so
i went straight down and the math of it came at me quick
NO not enough feet or i have too many or or
or i am too big or the world is too small
and so
my forehead splits like a peach
crack like snapping your bubblegum just right-
i think there is blood in my eyes but no no it's just the water
and now i don't feel solid, now i don't feel right, now i just feel, well
god i may not be a planet but god,
oh god i think i am lonely like one
okay so once you push through you can see, right?
you can see space- how it's cold, how it's dark, how it goes one forever
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
and no one knows just how you feel, your brains spilling out in the public pool
and no one can share that with you no you are floating, spinning
eyes so wide, wider still than the splitting of your skin.
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| against and with my- |
[13 Sep 2009|04:59pm] |
if i am fruit
i drip on your
fingers, rot softly
i could make you smile
if i am water to you
then drink me down
your skin will hold me in
i will make you fresh oh!
i will make you shine
if i am meat
i am just raw enough
i will fill you
my cells will separate
my hair will fall out
my legs my organs
they'll bloat
but
i will wash you
i will, i will
make you new
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| a tired lament. |
[24 Aug 2009|06:09pm] |
you
enveloping all the surrounding spaces
turning them soft
you eliminate those angles
shrink the distance
swing wide and sweet
make quiet my concerns-
don't empty your pockets of their change
just climb into bed
just tumble over me
let it jingle around us; touch of cold while we turn
turn
turn
flick your cigarette and start to smolder but
settle in slow: i want time to pass
without watching beer cans stack
(your door and the wind, clicking, clicking. the buttons on your shirt i can't reach, and soon this heat will sharpen, and there is a girl waiting at the other end of fall, isn't there?)
oh.
but the air is low and i want you
first
to show me
show me your shoulder blades
show me your spine
then
as casually as
dusting eyelash from sleepy cheek
brush me off
let me down
(gently.)
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| where the street dips down. |
[28 Jun 2009|03:24pm] |
the house sits squarely at the base of our hill, surrounded by a forcefield of cigarette smoke, car parts, and a dangerous, quiet, working class rage that keeps me wary. the family orbits and collects there bizarrely, but also as if they cannot avoid it: never more than two home at a time. there are forces at work that i do not understand. the only light in the living rooms glows from the tv and i get the feeling my mother wouldn't want me watching the program. this is where she comes from, my almost friend.
jessica. her body has a heft and a place in the world, a physical presence that somehow seems to elude me, even as we creep toward double digits. (i never feel like i exist half as much as she does, standing side by side.) i look more like some stumbling, newborn foal, not a girl, my eyes are wide to the world, i'm taking it in, but through a lens colored by sleeping cats, afternoons spent on tree limbs, sandwiches with the crust cut off....
jessica. she commands our time together with a grubby, freckled fist, irritation abound when i shirk at softball games, tug-of-war: too dirty, too physical, too foreign for my limbs which tend to be constantly akimbo and painfully skinny. when we ride our bikes her legs pump in rhythm, growing stronger and more sure; mine can't seem to cooperate and i frequently ride into cracks, trees, fences. disaster, still on training wheels. my tongue lolls out with frustration, exhaustion when i try to keep up. little puppy, wishing for shade and a book.
jessica. my tentative friend. but this is how it is, isn't it? little ones, we didn't know, how could we? we were never meant for much more for than a few weeks of companionship, the cartography was just all wrong: her parents smelled of sin tax, and her lawn never seemed to gather much sun, never quite green enough. whether someone told me, (in so many words,) or whether i simply felt afraid, (as children will,) of things i couldn't name yet, i do not remember. it does not matter. in the end, i think i could smell the fury, the apathy coming from that house, coming from her; i could see the outline of her training bra.
and then one day i sat, still and silent when she knocked at my door, stiff and mute until she went away. mute to her until we moved away... her name never again on my lips.
child. i listen with intent to a plastic stethoscope pressed to a bear's cotton filled heart. i apply a band-aid to cure. i am cruel to this girl because she, her family, seem different and dirty and it scares me? such a child.
i will see her again in many, many years. i will stare. she will light up a cigarette. she will adjust her top. she will not recognize me, she will not even notice me. it makes me feel tired, as if after all this time i am still yards behind, biking myself silly but never catching up. is it too obvious to say? did i really not see it? it's simple physics, i guess: it's so easy to coast down the hill but riding back up will knock me flat.
it was not right but i did not want her for so many reasons. i am still hiding from it.
|
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| trails and tracks. |
[28 May 2009|04:29pm] |
watch:
the circles flies make
+ the blocks i walk
to do what, really
not much
to go where
see,
all my nights are
actually mornings
and all my days (dazed)
they start too late
take note!
i have no answer to
what have you been up to?!
how are you doing?!
it's been so long!!
yeah,
millions of years, it's been
you have no idea
but,
if i can just keep a hold
on myself if i can just
walk straight and not be
ashamed in the morning
then,
i can at least tell you this-
i
am
learning.
if only slowly, if only through mistakes.
i feel so tired but
not close to dead
yet
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|
| progress is a noun / pt. 1 |
[11 May 2009|01:23am] |
i am small and unsure. i am quiet, afraid, tense: like an animal. both shocked and appallingly soothed by physical contact. i am crouched in a bathroom stall, i am crying, i am waiting it out. breath comes haltingly. i stand but i can never walk with any purpose. the stairs in my house led me straight up and what i could hear happening above nearly broke my heart. every time you come home, kid. eat your dinner alone.
i am afire with the injustice of this life. i finally look up and i hate everything i see. i am playing dress up and throwing back my head. i am surrounded, always by a cloud of smoke and oppressive, hot air. my legs twist and bend; my arms stretch and flow and when they do, someone will tell me i am important and unique. talented, delicate. and it moves all the way down to my waist, see these bones? life comes flying at me and blood rushes to the surface, blooms red, green, blue, black. my head never clears.
i am finally stretching out. my legs are tan and my hips have heft. i prop my feet on your dashboard, i trail my fingers out the window, i kiss you in the sand. whenever i am home i have terrible migraines, i can never sleep. i sit in classes gripped by panic. i watch someone i love bloat and rot and i prepare myself for an end. i stand at the very edge of a hotel roof and yell for plagues. i scream. do your worst.
i have settled but i am slightly darker; marked, like an ink stain, like a laundry mistake. i spend too much time in dark, climate controlled rooms with sweating drinks and sweating boys. the one i choose blows smoke in my face and we shake the walls when we fight. we move the building when we scream.
i am like a freeze frame, a still, colors and light and interchangeable people bouncing off of me.
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| disjointed / unrequited / misplaced, or, how i am told no. |
[04 Apr 2009|01:28pm] |
heavier and heavier we get,
days added to nights, night upon
nights
upon
nights
and also with words.
words! to one another, little paper boats set adrift
you on one side, me opposite, hands outstretched,
waiting, nervous:
it might fall apart before it reaches me.
then the weight moves ever north, settling, filling out, up in my organs and i will ration you, i will stretch you until i can feel you in the furthest reaches: you, in my fingers. you, in my outermost cells, so full of you that i leave tiny traces on whatever i touch.
and then?
then it's at least hour on a train back home, and i guess i don't mind, but there's only so much to look at outside before we dip into the tunnel and all i can see is a reflection. i always wish i could walk home, count each tree, move over the freeway interchanges, swim the bay. i want to move slowly, i do not want to be propelled efficiently back home to my empty apartment, my box in a building surrounded by people who don't talk to me; back to where you are not. (you couldn't know this, because i am always left. i am what is left.) i could feel you stop loving me, could see it draining away, (and to where? where does that go? it isn't lost, it just leaves...) so i would hold onto you like i was sinking, wrap you up in my legs and arms, collarbone to shoulder blade, trying to draw it out of you, trying to make you remember. and i'm sorry, i am, but i couldn't just drown.
and then i am told:
sink.
all this for all you boys.
you can fill so many pages,
and what have you ever given me
but more words?
|
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| waning. |
[16 Mar 2009|04:32pm] |
have you ever been to
didn't i see you at
no no, not right, back up
start again
okay
well
alright
it's like i've got this
heart
head
mass
walk around
holding it
cup like
cradle
woven fingers.
strangers see one
or two parts
hair or
feet or
eyes
but i don't care i just
thrust my hands at them
(like begging for change)
do you want this (it's a question)
well why not (almost a question)
this is what it comes down to
this is what i have to offer
i am not good at this
i am playing without
handbook
armor
skill
.
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| framed. |
[17 Feb 2009|05:06pm] |
i want to make myself better and
(heal fully-)
i want to help myself and
(become whole.)
all i can ask is how,
all you could say was why.
insert blank
fill up void
around and around
you are not ever going to change; even so, i don't wish to mark your progress.
so it's like this:
how can there be an end if we only go back; or, how can you re-break what's not broken,
OR,
how do i finally admit that you broke me?
(i just want to be good to myself.)
i just want to try.
do you remember all those broken bottles? the grass that we could watch die right beneath our feet, going brown and brittle and dry? your smoke filled apartment, light going out and never coming in. you grabbed my hand in a taxicab, i thought it would be enough, i thought it would cover me. i thought you would protect me.
i wish i had something to show for this.
i wish i had a scar,
(something red and ugly and infected that i could nurse and clean and watch heal and then fade.)
i wish i hadn't let you win.
it's days like these when i miss myself the most.
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|
| over. |
[31 Jan 2009|01:33am] |
i stood outside
in my grandfather's jacket
smoked a cigarette
watched the stillness of the street
i have
one memory, just the
one (before the call, the day, you know-)
he's telling me not to spin in
my great aunt's chair or i will fall
but i didn't fall
(i didn't know)
his hand was behind my back
not touching, just waiting, an in-case,
the wind had stilled
calmed (so much noise from that phone and every time she jumped a little,)
his jacket dotted with rain
magnifying:
the ember
the streetlight
a reflection from the road.
stayed behind my eyelids,
(when he moved his hand)
and i went inside, (and you both sat me down, "something's happened,")
that's when it started to pour.
i think tonight i will lay here
and listen to it.
and spin...
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