Relinquish disaster, stay intact for tomorrow. Among make-shift gifts for the holidays, hostility is the only bargaining I’ve been doing lately. The surprisingly sane one in the corner might beg to differ. Regardless, I’ve been a frequent visitor to this daft, grummy place off the brinks of prudence for a while now and with experience and without good reason it seems I’ve made a bed here—one much too comfortable to abandon. And so it goes without stating too bluntly that this is an alarm to the nearing train heading my way.  Bearing fond memory and a distaste for this new breed of disorder, I feel it is only necessary to disdain from any sort pride that may suggest to me another idea of soon-to-be failure. Its best to just stay on my tracks for a while.

"More", Again

I guess we’ve all been attached to the word “more”. The idea of seeing more, having more, being more. Satisfaction isn’t a feeling we’ve been engrained with. But what we’ve always been endowed with is energy. And it’s what we put our energy into that essentially constructs us. We can spend all our lives sculpting something that is permanent, so that it’s thighs are thinner, that it’s face is clearer, so that its nothing of it’s original state. But what we’ll end up with is a corroded and rusted statue that’s been drowned in glitter in hope that the sparkles fill the darkness that persists within the hollow structure. And we become bounded by the pearl necklace and adornments. It’s when we try to be more, that we become of less use. But, we could preserve the roots and let ourselves blossom into a thing of beauty that, with light of the sun, will never loose energy to keep growing. That captures every opportunity the wind blows and strength the hurricane evokes. That will benefit the world. Don’t seek to be more, seek to simply blossom.

I can't talk to anyone so I blog my secrets to anonymous online readers

1. I don’t think I’m pretty. I don’t think I’m cute. I don’t think I’m sexy. Or attractive at all. I've started to deny my hunger.
2. I feel useless, worthless, and helpless.
3. I’m cynical almost all of the fucking time. I don’t take really anything seriously anymore.
4. I do not trust many people. If any at all.
5. I’m very stubborn. It takes me a little while to warm up to things. I won’t always be willing to give your shit a try. 
6. I'm not always the most caring person, because for so long no one has cared about my shit, I've learned to not care about yours.
7. I do care about certain things. My interests. Obviously.
8. I’m not a fucking ray of sunshine all of the time. My attitude sucks, and I need someone who fucking understands that. But I get it. Who wants to be around such an unpleasant person?
9. I stress out about everything. I’m always stressed, despite how great I hide it. I will crack every once in a while, which is happening to occur more and more frequently (sorry). Just do yourself a favor and fuck off when I’m in that sort of mood.
10. I sit silently through my tortured nights, my dreams repeating themselves over and over and over. I can’t escape from the hell that is my mind, so I wallow in sick insanity and pretend I'm fine.

hands
   and
eyes
   and
lips
   and
thighs
   all
wrapped
   and
tangled
   and
tingling

doneeeee

From where these hobbling sticks do strain to stand, 
I find myself unable to stargaze, 
for something more than city smog 
obscures my farsighted eyes. 
Crystalline twinkles do flee, 
and I chase comet tails, 
though much to my dismay, 
they remain like the nymphs
so elusively far,
as glistening bodies do in
faraway shades so unlikemy solitary seat.

“Hello, you’ve reached…”

I held the phone back from my ear and just stared at it, unsure of whether the voicemail greeting was the echo of a promise broken, or just an inconvenient moment.

It’s funny how hope can be turned to dust with just three words.

I hit “End” and smiled bitterly at the connotation.

Peachy

Isn't life funny
how some days
you know with confidence
that you
are the peach,
sweet and full of
life
while on others
you suspect
with quiet apprehension
that instead
you
are the bruise
that is so
carefully and
meticulously
eaten around

I'm so scared my depression is going to beat me again

I've found myself in the sea, again. Sorry. How many times has it been now? Whenever I’m out of ideas about the sky or time or anything else, I’m tossed back into the ocean to either drown or draw a way out. Or both. Because I lean on waves to carry me. And the moon to hold my head above the water. But I’m tossed back and wading so often, it must bore you to read. I’m sick of it too.


Maybe I’ll just quit reaching for kites since too few have passed as of late, and forget about the air, turn my palms to the seafloor. And grasp at crescents of sunlight, long sunken and silent. Maybe I’ll just quit the air, at least for a little while.


I’m going to need a mermaid. I’ll need their lungs.
But they probably won’t come.
They’ll probably be climbing a cliff.
I wouldn't want to be around myself either.

Being

The metaphysical aspects
of Being were examined
by Aristotle and Plato
straight forward to hacks
like Gladwell
We’ve found little out
since the ancients
and it’s rare when anyone 
has anything new to add
Perhaps Being is so fundamental,
we’ll never be right on

life came from these pools

The streets shimmer
wet with hopes, visions
saturated in reflections
of light and movement
captured in ripples made
Pointillist by the drizzle
the chill seeps into our
bones, the air hung
with necklaces of dew
as we shuffle past one
another trampling the
portraits of our world
stitched into the asphalt
wishing for warmth but
appreciating the balmy
cool for its absence of
heat, hugging our coat 
or sweatshirt or sweater 
for its breadth, loving 
its glowing embrace

3rd Person Perspective

Her mind is full of situations that will never happen. But they do happen, in her mind, over and over again. All the worst case scenarios, the best case scenarios and every single scenario in between. She imagines unimaginable situations, conversations, happenings. In her mind everything is possible, even the impossible. Sometimes her brain is so busy calculating all the ‘what-ifs?’, it has no time to do anything else. She has such trouble forgetting about all the things that could possibly, or impossibly, go wrong. Almost compulsively she has hundreds of variables in her head of how past situations could have gone different. Some of them keep coming back; they haunt her, they taunt her. She tries to oversee everything, not just this moment, but the next one, and the next day, and the next week, and the next month. She tries to figure out all the possibilities, so out of all of them she can try to make the best one actually happen. One of the possibilities is that you let go. I know it is difficult, but you might be happy.

Better get here early
Grab front row seats
It's a must see:
My self-destruction

Contradiction

I am a complete contradiction, yet a constant and consistent. I am hysterical, hopeful, hatred-harboring,
loathing, loving, lost, left behind.I am musical, miserable, a miracle. I am quiet, calculating,considerate, caring, calm, warm, warning, warned, harmed, hurt, healed, sealed, concealed,
a confused contradiction.

simple

For you, with you
I’d lie and lay
To flay and find
Animals in clouds.

We’d rest in rows of Queen of the Night
As sunlight filtered through petals
Like stars.

To share
Smiles and miles and
Solitude and solace and
Succor
Sweet strawberries and Salinger
Together.

this morning

sometimes the morning after is too bright. the sunlight drenches all of yesterday’s choices in an uncomfortable staggering illumination and my chest hurts. my mind delivers me to each significant crossroad and i stand still trying to see beyond the fog by borrowing today’s brilliance. but the fog doesn’t evaporate it creeps into me seething over each sighing aching memory as i walk home. the smell of cigarette ashes is pressed into my skin.

glad I got to see you

Without the space, there’d be no

echo, no room for reverberation of
the heartbeat.  

Separation fosters
longing, and longing lengthens like
our shadows towering into dusk
until they touch.

comfort

And we can sit up until the candles die, suck on hard candies and count imaginary stars (I’m sorry we can’t see any from here), and you will bring your ghost camera and take pictures of our shoes lined up next to eachother to remind me that we lived just now- what we did was Be Here. You’ve made my teeth show and my cheeks scrunch up in that crinkling smile I think you asked for. It feels better, comfortable here against your back. You know there are people, strangers sometimes, I see walking around and I want to bring them close to me and and tell them over and over again how perfect they are.

Your Words

I like your words. The way they curl like cigarette smoke and insinuate themselves as I breathe, or how they smolder like adolescent coals in restless darkness, or the way they drown out all the other discord, all the uproar and fanfare in my heart, until I’m rendered sated and slick, a charred piece of toast, or the last drag of a cigarette.

Home

Serpentine swirls
billowing beneath
my will
stretched past forgeting,
forgiving allowances
made for each
confused wave,
each glance at the void,
each simpering truth
that wouldn’t be gilded.
We wished for more
than drifting bliss
we pined for
connection,
collisions that
might leave us bloody
in our dissonance.
Friction is welcome,
exquisite scarlet scraped
into understanding.

analogy

writing is like
fucking
i want to do it
all the time

it gets you to a
place
away
from 
people talking about their
successes and failures,

away from
crowded places,
pestering thoughts,
repeating yourself,
or whatever makes your
stomach hurt for no
logical reason

it gets you up there
with whoever’s running
the show

i guess
its kind of like
drinking
too

Precision

ever the architect

he measures the vellum between my vertebrae,

and draws comfort from his calculations.

Good Morning

This morning, as the sun perforated the veil of night and cast its silken cloth of brilliant reds and rustic oranges across our mortal shells; I awoke from dreams with your shallowed breath rhythmically caressing the nape of my neck and the subtle beat of your heart permeating skin and bone, to converse with my own.

Exhaling, my body melded further into yours until the only space between us was the pause between breaths.

here I go again

I always upset myself. I think way too much to begin with. I contemplate different situations in my head, over and over again until I believe they have occurred (or about to happen). I find myself (at this moment) wondering if I am ever thought about. Not by a specific person, just anyone really. I wonder if I am on anyone’s mind or if I am just known when they see me. We (at least I have) often feel small, insignificant even. We are ants working for something unknown and the magnifying glass is burning our chances to concur or mission. Maybe it is loneliness that makes me think? Loneliness smothers me. Every time I think of being forgotten my throat closes on me, making it impossible to even think about breathing. Maybe I am selfish? I don’t want to be in the limelight, I just want to feel like I belong. I don’t want to be this puzzle piece that is mixed in with the wrong puzzle for the rest of my life. Maybe it isn’t attention I crave, more like familiarity. I want something to fall back on. To know my ground is solid. I want tangible, palpable and every other word which describes the capability of being felt. I just want reality.

foreplay

it’s the memories

of anticipation

the tease of the coming attractions

that i think of today

the scent of breakfast wafting through the hallways

and foreplay

christmas eve and

the lick of the bottom lip before a kiss

the build up

before the let down

the memories never quite stack up

compared to the excitement of creating them

so let’s fumble in the dark

but leave our clothes on

and this way come morning

you’ll stay

Eyes on the Prize

If I keep looking at the horizon, then I’ll never see that dark side of things, right? Then I’ll always feel joy. I’ll be the wildest optimist living life’s adventure without regret. But it doesn’t feel real that way anymore. Reality should have pain in it. Reality should have hurt. There’s thorns in the jungle; there’s cliffs; and rock bottoms. But I’ve been casting all my worries within the orchid that slithers silently across the vineyard. Left untouched by the storm; unwounded by the fire ants. Self sustained by the polluted water that flows through it’s stamina.

I’ve been storing words and unresolved puzzles behind my lips that never seem to open during those days that end with ‘y’ or ‘why’.

And despite my sugar coated words, it has left a bitter taste.

I’ve been storing any sign of disdain or anger, underneath the surface of my eye lids, so that they are only real in my dreams. Or nightmares. And I wake up everyday, trying to find what is wrong with me. When I’m looking straight at the horizon, I'm blinded. I keep seeking the reasons for my absent mindedness and omnipresent emptiness, but never dare look at the dark side. Because if I keep looking at the horizon, I’ll always be happy.

I’m happy. I’m always happy.

best piece of advice ever received while crying:

"you are the cool kid and you are the smart kid, quit feeling sorry for yourself and act like it."

A House Inside You

I can’t see you. You are in a house inside you. I can’t see. You wet your windows trying to clear them up so I can peer in. But it’s not the windows. You’re just too far. I can’t see. You can shout to me all the details of the corners and furniture. I can only piece a picture out of watercolors. You can switch on every light, trip the breakers. But I’m still outside the walls. And then you can’t see.

And I’m just the same. You’re outside. I’ve fractured my fingers, against the walls. You can’t see

Sunday Rain

Breathing softly, trying to capture
racing thoughts I chase in vain

Questions deep, answers illusive
and fleeting as the Sunday Rain

Wind and water kiss my window
shutters creaking, dance and play

The moment’s beauty mystifies me
perhaps I’ll know such peace one day

Enlightenment is Sex

Enlightenment is like sex

At first its unknown,
when it’s known everything changes,
then it’s all there is to life,
when it’s felt, its over soon,
then it really is life
when its a steady habit,
then you begin to want something else,
when your at the next one
then you begin to long for the last,
when you don’t know what to do
then you start to believe in an ultimate one,
when love has your heart in its hands

More

Prophylactic measures to protect a heart prone to falling is the key; but, let’s be honest, falling is what we live for.  I don’t care what you say—the catharsis born by reading Notes from Underground, while smoked on heroin in the quiet candle-light, while blanketed by the curved shadows of the girl whose brains were just completely fucked by you, pales in comparison to the free-fall gravity refuting high of “falling in love.”  Mundane things all of the sudden become carnal and profane, and you’re carted back to Jane Austen times when fingers touching inner wrists was considered to be taboo.  Every text message from the object of your sweet affections is like foreplay, titillating to the point where pleasure becomes pain, and long before such missives turn to cheap sexts and unforgivable come-ons, you’re left literally panting for more. 

Therein lies the danger.  By “more,” I don’t mean more heated exchanges or fingertips grazing bare knees, because in such exchanges, what makes it fun is that “less” is “more.”  No, I’m talking about a naked that entails being fully clothed.  Notwithstanding the lurches induced by restrained flirtation, it’s when we bare our fears to the voice on the other end of that cellphone while your digital clock blinks 3:33 a.m. that “more” means “more” and not “less.” I’ve found that when everything becomes quiet but for your dripping faucet and errant traffic, truth becomes irresistible.  He is dope manifest clad in Siren reds—impossible to ignore or turn away.

The Candle in the Mirror's Reflection

I watch as the candlelight licks my shadow as our hands move furtively passed each other, never able to touch; a game of cats cradle is roped between our lethargic hearts and soon the night will carve us up like abandoned jack-o-lanterns.  Hollowed and ensnared, I’ll listen when violent stars give voice to my exquisite pain, as solitude glides into me and tells me I will always be alone.

Under Your Covers

Remember the time
when the covers
on your bed
were the only
shield
and armor
we needed
against
the terrifying
everything
that surrounded
us?

It's Okay

Everything is absolutely and unequivocally okay. There is no truth beyond this.

Yet there is also no human truth in this, no truth that can be lived.

Failing

I am flawed; deeply
gashed with bare
adulteration. Scars
climb me like vines
gripping concrete, and
I will fail you, again
and again, until you
feel as crushed by
my weakness as by 
the weight of everything
you dreamt that I was,
falling around you
in unforgiving demolition

Broken

Being strong is none too easy when the

Reality is; I am and will

Only ever be, fractured and fragile.

Knowing not when nor how nor who could

Ever piece together, the tiny shards of

Nothingness your absence will leave in its wake

Smiling Eyes

Smiling eyes disguise

the sighs of pain

that rain upon a 

soul so weak

they cannot speak

emotions weep

into a heart

that once burnt bright

now every night

when out of sight

those smiling eyes

break down and cry

till tear ducts dry

no more to weep

they welcome sleep

how to breathe

that moment you’re brushing your teeth and rubbing the dreams of hoary slumber from your eyes and you realize that there’s a poem somewhere that you can’t quite remember or that perfect line out of a bit of prose that sits like a drop of sweat on the tip of your tongue or that little bit of brilliance from Neruda or Foucalt that sums up everything you’ve ever felt in your entire life and what you’re feeling right now this very second as you watch yourself in your bathroom mirror slowly morphing into the person that everyone expects you to be—that everyone absolutely completely depends on you to be—this morning but you wish you could just crawl back into bed and find that poem or prose or bit of brilliance because you know that back between the bed-sheets is the only place that you can find the pieces of the soul you leave behind, the words that are the DNA to your life’s rhetoric, the brokenness you have to shed in order to face the harsh morning sunlight and the inevitable brutality it leaves inside your quaking heart

Summoned by conscious recollection, she will be smiling. They could be in a kitchen talking, before or after dinner. But they are in this other room, stillness felt except for the rising and falling of her chest. Embracing he holds her tightly. She buries her face into his body. Morning, maybe it's evening, light flows through the room. Outside the day is slowly succeeded by night, succeeded by day. The light in the room does not change. So they rub against each other, their mouths dry, then wet, then dry. They feel themselves at the center of a powerful and baffled will. They feel they are an almost animal, washed up on the shore of a world, or huddled against the gate of a garden, to which they admit they cannot be admitted.

dopamine in my coffee

I wonder, what goes on when we stop observing? Why is there so much of the world we don't see? What's behind the closed door, even though I've seen it a million times? Why do we only see the visible spectrum? And why is there dopamine in my coffee?

when I rise from my chair

You are there
beyond what is mentioned
when I rise from my chair
And predicting the future
always ends in futilities
I could walk with you
through all these words
that are foreign
but I would find
I was burning
in unutterable possibilities

Anticipation you cannot see
in my stride
when I move vaguely along
Plainly oblivious
to all the grass growing
under my feet
You see me
breathing slowly and
wonder how soon
I will fly into phrases
more pleasing than tasting
honey is sweet

A temporary distance
runs in a curve
beyond what is mentioned
Your eyes seize
the fire from
half-truths you can hear
Present moment is held
in nameless rooms
hid in the dark
Where you try
to read notes
I penned for you there

I move vaguely along
to plant footsteps
that lead to my heart
Creating a path
to free your own
from this distance
I am not oblivious
to the grasses
growing under my feet
When I rise from my chair
it's because,
I am anticipating
no change
in our existence

My life stopped making sense long before I stopped trying to make sense of it. Seems so pathetic now to attempt to decipher who I am, but every so often I try it, just in case.

Fight Club

"Why not switch,
Ditch all that doesn't matter?
Why are we holding onto
All this stuff?"

<333 this movie

I hate myself.

And I think everything would be so much

better

easier

happier

without me.

And then I hate myself more.

!

I'm confused for no reason.
I feel like I'm forgetting something.
It's just out of reach in my mind.
It's raining.
But it's not adding up.
Unclear.
Feel like I'm losing my mind.

When The Sun Rises

I don't know. I never feel at home. I've always felt disconnected from this world. Not in an extreme way, just ever so slightly. Like I was walking hand-in-hand with the world, but somewhere along the way I took a misstep, and ever since then we've been out of alignment. But sometimes when the night becomes the morning like it will pretty soon, I wonder if there's something spiritual at work when the sun raises, and it feels like my soul wakes up. Is it possible at times I really become one with this world?

awake again

Is my insomnia making me honest with myself? No, I don't hate myself. I pity myself because I can see the way I struggle with everyday things others do so carelessly. Things that would normally require half the effort.

falling short

A poem falls short; I'd like, instead
to draw a single line from me to you
and watch it curl into a word
so beautiful it's still unsaid –
or press paper to the window pane
so that the day might saturate
a note that brightly warms your hands,
spills birdsong from imagined trees
and buzzes like fat bumblebees,
but I am bound by language, love; I can't.

Moments

Maybe it was the haunting
Opulent light of midnight's
Majestic grace bringing forth an
Ethereal radiance so beautiful yet
Never more heavenly than you. But, on
That night, as the moons reflection hid among the
Slow waters of the ocean, I saw your wings.

Haikuesday

the expectation!
slip my finger in; pry your
envelope open...

Spark

Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swaps of the not-quite, not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists... it is real... it is possible... it's yours.

love me for being

someone who loves scrabble

someone who sleeps with her back near an open window in winter, breath rolling like a river into night

someone who wants to be waken up by love poems by e.e. cummings, and gives a small candle-flicker of a smile before opening her eyes

someone who appreciates the architecture of churches, but refuses to step inside

someone who has hands fit to hold wounded sparrows

someone who would tattoo that name onto her arm in the same color as her skin, so it would appear slowly as she suntanned, people thinking her blood was telling secrets to the world of its own accord

someone who learned Spanish to read  Neruda

someone whose hips whisper their own stories of the serpent and the garden of Eden

someone who playfully bites the back of their neck, or like a leopardess, carrying her kitten to safety

someone who will make him wait for her to come out of the shower

someone whose smallest movements are most amazing: the falling of her hair over her shoulder, the deep sigh when she sleeps

someone who maps out every ticklish part of his body, and uses her knowledge strictly for evil

someone who paints their bodies black and makes love under the stars

someone who burns through a chest like the first shot of scotch

someone whose tongue nervously traces the roof of her mouth

someone who stopped listening to Bob Dylan after he sold out to China

someone who who smells faintly of coffee, cigarettes, perfume, shampoo

someone who understands the unforgivable importance of life

stay

he said
stay with me


and like the leaves that
fluttered to their feet
on that october day,
her excuses fell away

and she stayed.

Light

What I feel inside when I think of you is light; it brightens my day. And like a delicate flower, heavied with dew, I stretch towards the morning sun.

She clasps the rag with crooked hands,
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure of the world,
She stands.

She watches from her mountain walls,
The wrinkled sea beneath her crawls,
And like a thunderbolt,
She falls.

Changes

Its today: all of yesterday
Dropped away among the
Fingers of light and
Sleeping eyes of the night.
Tomorrow
Will come in gentle footsteps
To remove sorrow;
The ascent of the sun
Has already begun.

....

From memories
Of the birds that chanted to me
That sweet morning,
From the
Beginning notes of yearning,
From the thousand
Responses of my heart never to cease,
From the
Myriad aroused words:
Words stronger,
More potent than any;
Such as now
starts scene revisiting.

Shine! Shine! Shine!
Pour down your warmth,
Great sun!
While we bask,
We two together.

Winds blow north,
Or winds blow south;
Day come white,
Or night come black;
Home, or
Rivers and mountains away from home;
Smiling all the time,
Minding no time,
While we two keep together.

Low hangs the moon;
It rose late.
It lags:
I think it is
Heavy with love.

I wake up every morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as simple as it sounds and as impossible as it actually is, happy. But during the course of each day my heart will descend from my chest into my stomach. By early afternoon, I am overcome by the feeling that nothing is right, or nothing is right for me, and by the desire to be alone. By evening I am fulfilled: alone in the magnitude of my grief, alone in my aimless confusion, alone even in my loneliness. I am not sad, I repeat to myself over and over, I am not sad. As if I might one day convince myself. Or fool myself. Or convince others--the only thing worse than being sad is for others to know that you are sad. I am not sad. I am not sad. Because my life has unlimited potential for happiness, insofar as it was an empty white room. I fall asleep with my heart at the foot of my bed, like some domesticated animal that is no part of me at all. And each morning I wake with it again, in the cupboard of my rib cage, having become a little heavier, a little weaker, but still pumping. And by the midafternoon I am again overcome with the desire to be somewhere else, someone else, someone else somewhere else. I am not sad.